Legacy IV
by ruth baulding
Summary: *continuation of Lineage/Legacy AU* Book 4: a pirate hunt leads Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi to a barren Outer Rim world, where he must contend with a despicable hive of scum and villainy, a lamentably uncivilized sporting event, and a small garrulous vergence in the Force.
1. Chapter 1

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Cliegg Lars was a man in love.

Not for the first time, of course. No. Like many, he had first been smitten by Love's bitter shafts as a young man, in the days when he dreamed that life would hold more for him than moisture farming on a miserable, economically depressed dustball in the godless Rims. He, like most young men, had been a rebel against the strictures of his allotted destiny – and in the Core he had found disillusionment and Alka. The former had broken his heart: the wastelands of the glittering Core worlds were inner, rather than outer, deserts of the spirit - more arid in their own way than Tatooine's Dune Sea. The latter had mended his aching heart: in Alka he had discovered that _love_ was an oasis more precious, more paradisiacal than any mirage spun of heat and delusion.

When Alka gave him a son – that would be Owen, now a young man himself – he had thought his happiness complete.

Until she died. And that was when he had sworn off love and his dreams of rebellion, and returned to Tatooine – to lick the bleeding wounds of utter defeat and seek for understanding in sand and endless sky, in nature's miserly parsimony, in submitting docilely to the burden of his inherited role.

In the desert, there was room enough to accommodate even the most infinite sadness; under the glare of two suns, there was no time to contemplate it. And so, gradually, he had adapted to his destiny, and raised his son to be steadfast moisture farmer like his father, and his father before him. Neither rebellion nor love had persecuted his placid inner realm for this long, long decade and more.

Until now. And for Cliegg Lars, _now_ had a pair of eyes in which tender compassion was distilled into a deep soft brown like the exquisite fungus that appeared, miraculously, upon the desert's sands after dewfall. _Mannah,_ the natives called it. Heaven's bounty. The woman was an angel descended, gift and bearer at once. Her name was Shmi Skywalker. And she returned his love, in equal measure. There was only one, _fatal,_ problem.

She was a slave.

* * *

Torbb Bakk'ile had no love for piracy.

She did not _hate_ it, per se; a Jedi Knight shall not know anger or hatred. And Torbb, a solid ten years into her Knighthood, and in the fourth decade of her eventful life, was wise and experienced enough to know that conformity to _type_ was itself the greatest form of courage. Passion -and sometimes even compassion - tempted the heart to find _exception_ in personal circumstance, and _dispensation_ in such exception. For any individual to foreswear the seemingly innate privilege of uniqueness, to admit that _this_ or _that_ outrage, _this _or _that_ suffering, held no priority over any other in the universal order of things… that was courage.

It was renunciation. It was _detachment._ And it was the only sure, if precarious, path between the equally fatal abysses of love and hate.

In the end, these two lay perilously close – so intimately nestled together that some philosophers have supposed them indistinguishable in root and essence, so volatile and ambiguous that they easily transmute one into the other, as fluid and treacherous as quicksilver itself.

"But Master Seva does not agree," her current traveling companion observed, in a mellifluous tone that suggested mere academic interest.

Torbb was not fooled. "You waste time reading obscure tractates on the nature of love?" she scoffed, good-naturedly, crossing one enormous leg over the opposite knee, dark cassock-style robes falling in heavy folds about her gargantuan boots.

" Only so I can waste more time arguing about it with Master Jinn."

Obi-Wan Kenobi was an enigma, more often than not; whether this last remark was a mere verbal parry, rebuffing her implied censure, or whether it were a frank admission of lasting and deeply _personal_ interest in the subject, Torbb could not say. The young Knight – barely old enough to hold the rank, but _serious_ enough in said vocation to rival any dour and ascetical elder – moved through conversations like a duelist, feinting and reversing, melting away from direct attack then suddenly thrusting in for a whiplash strike. Forthright to a fault – as her contemporaries and especially the junior members of the Temple community had intimated – Torbb found her companion's elusive style strangely appealing, a comfortable counterweight to her own nature.

"You two bicker like a pair of old biddies," she scoffed. "I wouldn't tolerate it if I were in Master Jinn's shoes, Kenobi."

A sly shrug met this recommendation. "Ah, but the student must teach the master, or the pairing is not right."

"I thought you weren't his padawan anymore?"

"No… but there is some remedial teaching still left to do. And far be it from me to shirk any duty, however odious."

Torbb Bakk'ile guffawed heartily at that , glossy black topknot swishing over one burly shoulder as she leaned against the passenger compartment's bulkhead. "Tell me what Master Seva says, then, since listening to yourself talk is part of _duty_ now."

Obi-Wan raised both brows, acknowledging the jest without admitting to the hit. Sprawled on the single inset bunk, hands propped idly behind his head, one knee bent and the other boot-tip contemplatively tapping the wall paneling, he presented a picture of careless relaxation unexpected in a man presently embroiled in a _pirate hunt._

But that was Kenobi for you, all over again. Torbb shifted, impatient, expecting a gentle jibe in return.

Instead, she received a quiet and sober answer. "He says that love is entirely prior and superior to hate, which is nothing but its privation and reflection; and also that of the two, love brings greater strength, deeper understanding … and more profound suffering."

Torbb pursed her lips. "Wise man, your Master Seva."

She had never been much one for philosophy classes as an initiate or padawan. And she had little time for them in the present moment, either. For now, she had a job to do, one both destined and unspeakably distasteful.

But a Jedi does what she must. And in this case, she would have no other living being do it in her stead.

* * *

Anakin Skywalker loved his mother.

Not just in the way that any eight - almost nine- year old boy loves his mother. His love was a thing palpable, an armor and mantle that he shaped about her soft shoulders, wrapped in heavy folds of _need_ and fierce protectiveness about her slight frame. It was his _love_ that fended off predators, stayed Watto's whiphand, barricaded them from starvation and privation, kept Shmi _happy._ She needed him.

And he needed her, more than any child ever born had words to express. Shmi was the gentle womb sheltering him from that which lurked _beyond,_ a cruel world figured and signified by Tatooine's wastes and villanies – the reaching maw of Fate slavered for him, open-jawed and hungry, eager to consume him and render him other than himself, hammer him into some new and awful form upon an anvil of destiny. He knew it, he dreamt it, he felt it in his bones.

And when Anakin had premonitions, they came true.

Which is why he protected his mother with his love. It kept her safe from all the bad things that constituted the galaxy at large, and it kept him safe from those same depredations, those cruel exigencies masquerading as mere chance. He knew that he was _Special _because she told him so every day. He wished that he were not. But he was also thankful to whatever nameless power had rendered him so, for the curse was also a blessing, the brand of his shame a weapon in his hand. He was _gifted,_ and he would use that gift to _stop_ bad things happening, to ward off the debt collectors sent to demand payment for his secret, awesome, inheritance.

The only problem was that it didn't always work. He was only eight –almost nine- years old, after all.

"Mom. Mom! What's wrong?"

Shmi seldom wept in his presence; when she did, it was terrifying.

A sun-weathered hand pulled him into the most familiar, the most blissful of embraces. "Oh Ani." Warm breath against the top of his head. He buried his nose in her bosom, smelling the dusty linen of her shift-dress. "Bad news. Watto has declared bankruptcy. He will have to sell everything."

Anakin frowned. Watto was a greedy, ill-tempered sleemo whose gambling addiction kept him on a giddying cycle of disaster and sudden redemption. Bankruptcy had threatened to take his junk-dealership more than once, even within Anakin's memory. "That happens all the time."

"No." Shmi's grip tightened. "This is different. I heard them talking in Mos Espa. The Hutts are sending an enforcer."

That was bad. Watto must really be in trouble with the planet's vermiform crime bosses this time. And selling everything meant… "He's gonna sell us too, huh?"

"He'll have too."

But that was all right. Watto was a cheating, lying, cowardly barve – but for some inscrutable reason, he was decent to his slaves. Besides owning them like chattel in the first place, of course. "We'll be together," he asserted. And he would always protect her.

But Shmi's arms grew rigid around him, and she began to weep in earnest. "Oh, Ani, you don't understand. When Gardulla sold us, you were a baby.. you needed me. They kept us together. But Watto has been bragging about you for years – how you can fix things, how clever you are… oh, _ma buki - _I can't – "

Anakin's heart thumped against his ribs, defiant and appalled. They could be separated? Forever?

"NO!" he hollered. "I won't let them!" He would _kill_ whoever tried to wrest them apart, he would –

"Shush, shush- we can't –"

"Yes, we can! I'm not losing you, Mom! I'm not!"

And to prove the point he tore himself from her trembling grasp and hurtled into the darkened streets outside the slave quarters, a furnace like the liquid heart of a sun kindling beneath his ribs. Heat rose off the packed stone road to meet him; sand eddied in furious curlicues at his feet. _Fire. Fire. Fire._

_I am not a slave. I am a person!_

His protest rose to the star-dusted heavens. Regal, aloof, the thousand million points of light peered down at him, immovable and serene. Out there, far away, lay the Republic, a fabulous conglomeration of free worlds where slavery was illegal, where wealth ran in the streets and water fell from the sky. Gorgeous people populated its paradises, and heroes with laser swords and magical powers righted its wrongs. Starships flitted from one glittering island of life to the next, flocks of silver birds winging on high among the empyrean clouds of milk-white. All this happened without him, in ignorance of his very existence. The thought was _crushing._

_I am a person and my name is Anakin!_

But the stars made no answer, offered no comfort that night. Or the next. Or the next.

* * *

Hatred, like its feeble counterpart _love,_ demands a period of courtship.

Where love inspires a sweet yearning, a melting surrender of _self_ , a reigning passion profound enough to drive away all other appetites and even sleep, _hate_ does more: its first taste is like infatuation, titillating, intoxicating. From thence it deepens, burning into the flesh and the heart like a boring beetle, waxing into a yearning of bloodlust sufficient to subsume every other passion into the bonfire of its obsession. The object of hatred is a kind of beloved, a coy and elusive prey, a thing to be seduced, degree by slow degree, into hatred's smelting-furnace, into the embrace of final extinction.

Like a lover in the flush of longing, the hunter cherished the image of his chosen _victim-_ the worthy opponent, the equal match. Ambition fired his longing, for he had labored long and endured great suffering to come this far, within reach of the most coveted rank and title in all the galaxy, the blackest mantel of an occult royalty. He had once possessed another name, now forgotten. Nameless, though his flesh was scarred and desecrated by obscene nomenclature, forbidden oaths painted upon his skin in ash and blood, he strove to _merit_ a better and new title.

He would be _Darth._ Lord. Master. Conqueror. Vengeance embodied.

To be so anointed, he must pass his Trials; among the tasks appointed to test his mettle, to plumb the pure depths of his hatred, was this: the _wooing_ of a perfect enemy, a child of Light to be tempted and overthrown, seduced and _owned – and _then sacrificed upon the pitiless altar of darkness. To _corrupt_ a Jedi was to kill him twice; physical death mattered little once the spirit had been _violated._

The very thought sent a shiver down his spine,

And in the accomplishment of this task there lay another: for his Master – cruel slave driver, fearsome deity, center of his pain-filled universe – had sent him upon another quest, a hunt for something Special. A child, scryed as though through dark glass, a prodigy born to lowliness, destined to greatness, the fulcrum and tipping point of this age, of the next. A being with no name, as yet.

Like the hunter, this child waited to be given his proper title. He waited for power, for true _freedom._

This unknown child and this chosen Enemy both waited. They hid, they fled, they eluded capture. But not for long. Their time was coming, their reckoning grew nigh. The hunter had scented the ethereal wind and found the Dark currents eddying, pooling, coagulating, about a singular Place. Like lovers magnetically drawn to a secluded grotto, the Enemy and he crept nearer, nearer, closing in upon the quarry, upon one another.

The hunter licked his tattooed lips and groaned deep in his throat. Soon. Not soon enough.

But soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 2**

Anakin had the store clean and tidy before second sun-up. You had to get moving early on Tatooine – most business happened in the early morning, before the heat waxed to intolerable intensity. In summertide, the suns moved more slowly across the sky. He'd wondered about that a long time. The Jawa traders said it was because the two stars were bickering lovers, and tarried along their road in heated debate during the hot months. The spacers said it had to do with elliptical orbits, but couldn't proffer more detailed explanation; Shmi, who knew everything important in life, told him not to worry about it so much.

"It's how it is for us, Ani. Why do you have to understand? You can't fix it and you can't change it."

He polished the greasy countertop and perched upon its smooth curve. But what if he _could_ fix it? Pretty much anything could be fixed if you knew how it worked on the inside. Like that racer he was building for Watto. It was going to be the Fastest Pod Ever, simply because Anakin did not merely know how to build a racing machine. No, he knew more than that: he understood the nature of speed itself. And so, he was its master.

"Master Anakin." He tried the syllables out, softly under his breath and grinned. It had a nice ring to it. Sometimes he fantasized about living in a big luxury palace with Shmi, droid servants tending her every need, doing the cooking and cleaning and work for her so she could rest and learn to read like she'd always wanted. And lots of hangar bays out back where Anakin would build things. Racers and aircars and swoops and .. other stuff. Wizard stuff like he didn't know what, yet.

That was a good daydream. It was safe, unlike the other one, the scary one that felt more like a glimpse of the future. In that dream other things happened. He was far away from Shmi and bad things plagued his every step, things he had to fight. Dark things, rimmed in fire and ice.

He shuddered, and hopped off the counter just as Watto banged though the front entrance, setting the door chime jangling.

"Ehhhh, you little chiszzzk, stop lounging around and do some work!" the gruff Toydarian greeted his hapless underling.

"Cha 'uzzcha," the boy retorted. _The work's all done._

"Huh." Wings fluttering madly, the junk shop's owner heaved himself into his private lounging nest above the back room – the grotty little hammock where he kept his money and slept the long afternoon hours away. "Don't give me lip," he warned, lackadaisically.

"Okay, okay." A figure was already darkening the doorstep, the morning's first customer. Anakin squinted, and then made a face.

He didn't like that man. Or, he didn't trust him. He busied himself with sorting spare parts, hunkering down behind a display shelf so he could listen without being spotted.

"'Day to you,"" the visitor called out.

"Buki!" Watto hollered. Then, "Where in Hukasa is that little –ehhh! What can I do for you, eh? Some more vaporator parts? You _wish!"_

The broad-shouldered man entered, politely brushing dust off his trousers and boots before crossing the threshold. "Actually, no. I ah… well, I've come to make a business proposition, Mr. Watto."

"Bees-ness, eh?"

Anakin could hear the intrigued pumping of the Toydariuan's wings – thump thump thump as they batted the air about his bloated body. In his present financial straits, Watto was vulnerable to the rapine and greed of his neighbors. A business proposition might be anything – a veiled ultimatum, a bad investment scheme, an opportunistic rival seeking to further his ruin. Or it could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. There was no way to tell – but the humble moisture farmer standing before him was no match for the conniving junk dealer's wit, in any case. He was not a real threat.

"Yes, sir. Perhaps I can buy you a drink at the cantina, and we could discuss it?"

The local watering hole opened before dawn, like any other respectable establishment. "All right. _Buki!_ Hey, you-"

"I'm here." Anakin popped out from his place of concealment, all wide innocent eyes and pert attention.

Watto's bulging eyes slatted suspiciously. "Tend shop while I'm gone, eh? I'm at a business meeting if anyone asks."

"Okay, Mr. Watto sir."

"Hhhnnu," the Toydarian grunted, hovering his way into the blazing early morning with the farmer in tow.

Anakin hopped back onto the counter, twisting the hem of his stained tunic. A funny pit had formed in his gut, a queasy premonition niggled at the back of his mind. Cliegg Lars had a _look_ about him – a desperate, last-resort kind of look. Anakin didn't like it. He didn't like any of Lars' looks, especially the one that he bestowed on Shmi, when he sneaked into the slave quarter to speak with her. She'd invited him into dinner once or twice, too, and stayed up long into the night talking to him.

Anakin wasn't stupid. He'd grown up around animals, and he knew stuff.

"That farmer just wants to _e'chuta schozza, _Mom."

"Ani!" Brown eyes widening in pained disapproval, Shmi had fixed him with a reprimanding look. "That's not true. And you're too young to think about such things."

"I'm not too young, Mom. And he's a _sleemo."_

"He is a good man. Can't you feel it?"

All Anakin could feel was the hard lump in his throat. He didn't want Lars in his house, and especially not talking to Shmi, or looking at her in a way that made her look _back_ at him. It wasn't right ; it threatened to punch gaping holes in his carefully fortified oasis, his _happy _home, his sanctuary.

"Ani…." Shmi tried, cautiously. "Have you ever thought what it would be like to have a home? A real home, and freedom?"

Of course he had! "I'm gonna free us, Mom! Just give me more time!" He was going to invent something fabulous he could sell in the Core, and find their slave implants and remove them, and steal a starship and learn to fly it so they could run away and be free and rich and …and all kinds of stuff. As soon as he was old enough, had learned enough. She wasn't giving him enough _time._ "And we have a home! Right here! Why are you being _stupid?"_

He never heard the answer, because he had run away – and later, when the storm had passed, Shmi never mentioned the exchange again.

Anakin had hoped that maybe Lars would give up, or move to the other side of the Dune Sea. Or maybe be eaten by a krayt dragon or something. But the stupid bantha head didn't and hadn't. And here he was again, seeking Watto's favor. Anakin had a clear idea just what that _business proposition_ entailed. Once again, he didn't have enough time.

There was a filthy little hovel of a fresher attached to the shop's back porch. He vomited his guts out and then felt better.

And the seeds of a plan germinated in his imagination – a desperate heroic plan, one wild enough and bold enough to satisfy the ambition of a man cursed by a deficit in years and an excess of talent. Freedom beckoned, and so did glory. The Boonta Eve Podrace was just around the corner. And if he played his sabaac cards right….

He could fix _everything._

* * *

"That dust is going to wreak havoc on the reactor coolant intakes. We'd better cycle down all the way."

Qui-Gon Jinn agreed with a curt nod; his mind was already reaching out past the dust-clouded viewport into the wild expanse of sculptured rock and oceanic sand dunes beyond. The Living Force scudded like precious dew over the barren landscape, drawn thin like purest blown glass, almost _harmonic_ in its brittle intensity here. "Gorgeous," he murmured, despite himself.

Beside him, Obi-Wan raised a sarcastic borw, flicked his eyes forward to the desolate and storm-smeared desert outside, and then back to his former mentor. A barely bridled witticism sparkled unspoken in his gaze.

He didn't need to say it. Torbb Bakk'ile filled the cockpit hatchway, hands on broad hips. "With respect Master Jinn, you've an odd notion of _beauty."_

"Much depends on relative perspective. He's just spent _weeks_ studying exotic specimens with Master Pertha on stars-know-what forsaken septic pit in the far Rims. This is a resort by comparison."

The tall woman peered critically at the shifting veils of sand and wind. Gravel particles hailed against the transparisteel enclosure, ghostly hands clawing for admittance. "All the same."

Qui-Gon held up one hand, placidly. "Feel it," he told his subordinates. "The Light grows pure and potent when attenuated; in weakness, peculiar clarity- in limitation, furled potential. A fit place for a Vergence."

"You are waxing poetical in your senility, Master."

"The Force is paradoxically strong here, where Life must struggle so valiantly."

Torbb Bakk'ile set about shutting down the console and packing survival gear, opting for pragmatic silence.

"Of course," Obi-Wan drawled. "Hence the paucity of violent crime and the staggering effusion of cultural achievements on Tattooine. I can _hear_ the Force singing, Master…. Oh wait .That's just the drunks at the local cantina. My mistake."

His companion rose to his full and impressive height and towered over the insouciant Knight, arms folded. "You are far too young to be such an incorrigible cynic, Obi-Wan."

"I'll grow into it," the younger man blithely assured him.

Torbb cut across the friendly banter. "All right. Kenobi, you and I should follow up that tracking beacon. He's docked within forty klicks of this location – we'll take the swoops. I've got goggles and helmets for both of us."

"Fine." Obi-Wan pulled a tattered duster's thick folds over his head.

"You haven't managed to lose it yet," Qui-Gon remarked, feigning amazement.

He received a sardonic glare in reply.

"I shall make a sortie into the nearest settlement," the Jedi master decided. "If there is to be a black market auction, the locals are sure to be gossiping about it."

"My thanks," Torbb responded, making him a shallow obeisance. "Your assistance is deeply appreciated, Master Jinn." She disappeared into the aft compartment, en route to the cramped cargo bay where the lightweight grav bikes waited.

Obi-Wan hesitated upon the threshold before following her. "There were no ransmissions from Coruscant."

"The Council will not notice your …delayed.. in returning for another half-cycle."

The younger Jedi frowned. "I was hoping for word from Bant…"

Qui-Gon grimaced in sympathy. The rim patrol mission had ended in disaster, for his young comrade: three of his friends had been injured, two of them gravely, in the aftermath of a slave raid and ambush. "It was your choice to participate in Torbb's quest," he gently admonished. "Focus on your purpose here, rather than your anxieties."

Obi-Wan nodded, wryly, as though chastising himself for _needing_ the reminder. When he raised his eyes again, a question lurked in their depths. "Why did you come? Truly?"

An evasive smile. "For the scenery."

"Truly, Qui-Gon." There was a hint of unlikely emotion behind the vexed inquiry.

"Truly?" He spread his hands. "I felt you might need… an accomplice."

The young Jedi snorted, dismissing his own ill-ease along with the conversation. "Don't take candy from strangers or pet strange akks, Master," he advised, an edge still rasping under the jesting words.

"I shall endeavor to honor your teachings in all things," the tall man quipped, bowing low.

Obi-Wan smiled despite his effort at control, and disappeared through the hatch in a skirl of duster folds and scuffed filed boots.

A few minutes later, two swoops sped away in an easterly direction, kicking up billows of white sand behind them, while a single lonely figure trudged doggedly toward Mos Espa's dilapidated outskirts, cloak and long hair streaming behind him in the angrily rising wind.

* * *

High on an outcoropping of sun-bleached stone, just within macrobinocular range, the hunter watched them depart.

He had caught their pustulent stench the moment he'd descended his ship's ramp: Jedi. Two headed into the open wilderness, and Hutt territory – the other tramping like an aged pilgrim for the spaceport town.

They knew where the Child was hidden. He could _taste_ it, _feel_ it in the Enemy's signature, the trace of contact, the stamp of destiny. And why else would they be here, on Tatooine, than to recover what they had hidden? He had only to track them down, intervene and capture the prize before they managed to smuggle it off-world.

But there were _three,_ and he had learned his bitter lesson already – destruction had nearly found him on Paxel, when the Enemy had blown an entire port sky-high; the hunter had escaped the conflagration by a burning hair's-width, fleeing the scene even as his opponent sped away in cowardice.

Let the Jedi run. He would run himself out, eventually, to the labyrinth's heart where love and hate melded together into one monstrous amalgamation, where the hunt would find consummation and release.

In the meanwhile, the hunter would wait and watch. Two compact probe droids winged their way down either side of the craggy slope, eager hounds pursuing their unwitting quarry. When the spies had dwindled into specks amid the swirling dust, the hunter wrapped himself in his sable cloak and returned to the ship, there to keep his patient vigil and to nurture the hearth-flame of his contempt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

A _vergence_ is an event within the Force itself – a gathering of potential about a specific center, a concentration of that which penetrates and binds the galaxy together. The sages have observed such things – recorded them, described them – centered about a certain time, a certain place, and on rare occasion about a particular person.

The Force moves in mysterious ways. Qui-Gon Jinn understood this, and therefore also knew that there was no guarantee at all, no reason to suppose that he would be able to _find_ that same singular phenomenon that his former apprentice had discovered here on Tatooine a few short months ago. Indeed, it may have been the will of the Force to reveal this strange _warping_ in the fabric of destiny to Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan alone. Which would imply that the vergence was not centered about a place, or even a person, but about a _relationship._

The Jedi master's stride lengthened. Leave it to Obi-Wan to _ignore,_ to _doubt,_ the bright heraldic trumpets of fate. His innate sense of unworthiness, of humility, forbade the man to entertain any such notion. But that did not mean that his closest associate and former mentor had to be so willfully blind. Indeed, Qui-Gon felt it incumbent upon himself to seek out the truth, to answer that ethereal summons his student was too modest to pursue aggressively on his own behalf.

All Obi-Wan knew was that he had missed a step somewhere, failed to hear the Force's subtle promptings. Disturbed meditation and restless nights were, to him, a symptom of further failure – indications that he was a wayward servant of the universal Light. Never would he dare to see such promptings for what they were: the Light cajoling, urging, whispering in his ear, gently enticing him back to this unlikeliest of places, to meet ….whatever it might be. The young Jedi still had much to learn of the Living Force, though his heart was willing and open. He _had_ returned to Tatooine, but blindly, stumbling in the dark, unsure of his path or its goal, naïve and hesitant as a callow groom brought to an arranged marriage ceremony.

Qui-Gon was not so inexperienced in the ways of destiny. And he was not above playing _intermediary._

The settlement was typical of such places: a reeking, ramshackle convocation of adobe huts and outbuildings sprawling about a central pit-style spaceport. The streets were nothing but packed earth; fleis buzzed noisily about heaps of animal droppings; beasts of burden and rickety grav-transports shared the disorderly thoroughfares; pedestrians were swathed head to toe against wind, and possibly recognition; and the desire to be _forgotten,_ unnoticed , hung like a seductive incense in the air.

In Mos Espa the gaalxy's most infamous ne'er-do-well could hide in the open. The township was full of those who would rather fade into the anonymity of rock and sand: broken hearts, refugees, wanted men, gunslingers, the destitute, the weary, the malicious and opportunistic. They swirled and eddied along the banks of their dry riverbed, like the dust storm's vanguard still blustering along the cracked byways.

There was a marketplace in the center of town; a crooked labyrinth of alleys just beyond held more permanent vendors' shops. The tall man nipped into the shade of one such artificial canyon and then turned, suddenly, a flicker of motion at the periphery of vision arresting his attention. The Force sparked warning and then quieted.

Perhaps he was over-wrought by expectation, but he did not think so. Closing his eyes, he reached deeply in to the invisible plenum, beneath the merely sensory, seeking a familiar trace, an echo of another's passing. And there – though many standard weeks had passed – he felt it, the faint lingering aura of a bright presence. Here, where the Force was thin-drawn like artisan glass, even such impressions lingered, footsteps stamped upon the finest of clays.

Obi-Wan had been here, in this alley, at …. That door.

He ducked beneath the drunkenly sagging lintel into a disorderly junk-dealer's shop. Light shafted from deepset skylights; rusting components sat stacked in barrels and crates; a deactivated pit droid slumped in one corner. The warehouse was redolent of sweat and grease, the floor tracked over with prints and stained heavily. A small bell on the counter chimed prettily when he pressed it for service. The Jedi master chuckled a bit at the placard promising that _this_ establishment did not cheat, and charged fair prices.

Unlikely. He knew the Rims well.

"Whoa! _Whoa!"_

The Jedi master looked down, down down at a pair of startling blue eyes looking up, up, up. The moment spun out, quiet and unhurried.

The boy blinked, staring unabashedly with mouth slightly agape, dirty blonde hair sprouting from his head in a tousled mop. The child's psyche was a defensive wall of adamantine strength – the scarred citadel of life-long slavery, or of… great strength in the Force. "You're a Jedi Knight," the waif blurted, in awe.

Awe, but not _fright. _No, the boy was… self-possessed. "You must be Anakin," Qui-Gon concluded. It was obvious.

The boy's eyes widened further. "Choobazzi! You can _read my mind?"_

The tall man squatted down, to bring himself more on a level with his interlocutor. "No. Not in the way you think, anyway. A friend of mine met you already, however."

Anakin's eyes darted here and there, and lit upon the 'saber hilt peeking out from the Jedi's dark robe. "I knew it!" he exclaimed. "He sent you, huh? To free me and mom? He acted all cool and stuff but I knew he was pretending. Did you bring lots of Jedi? Did you bring like a whole-"

The tumble of questions ceased when the visitor held up a warning hand. "I am not here to stage a slave rebellion."

Disappointment precipitated in the Force, a cold windfall. Anakin crossed his arms. "Well, but what about Mom and me? Aren't you here for us?"

Qui-Gon stood. "I should like to meet your mother, if that is possible," he cautiously responded. "But I cannot promise you anything. You must understand this."

Anakin shrugged, youthful confidence outweighing any dampening effect these words might have had. "Okay. But you're gonna have to wait till nighttime, when the shop closes. If Watto catches me not working he'll _flay_ me. "

"Very well. I'll return at closing time… in the meanwhile, is there a cantina where the locals prefer to congregate?"

"Sure. Flaky's. Over by the eopie pens. That's where everybody goes, all the spacers and merchants and stuff. They don't mind _ootmian_ there, but don't take any droids with you. And I dunno if a Jedi would be very popular. Just saying."

"Thank you for the advice." With a nod, he turned and headed for the door.

"Hey, mister! What's your name? Cause Mom's gonna ask."

"Qui-Gon Jinn."

"Okay, Mister Qui-Gon sir. See you later!"

Once safely outside the shop again, he scanned the alley for signs of danger, for that elusive presence he had sensed before. There was nothing but dust and the stink of eopie dung. And a distant chiming in the Force, a haunting suggestion of melody, minor chords both sweet and tremblingly portentous.

There was…. _something…._ about the boy.

He headed for the cantina at an easy, loping gait.

* * *

Torbb Bakk'ile turned out to be an unrepentant speed demon.

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth and doggedly followed in her wake, veering to left and right in a sinuous wave to avoid the tumultuous hurricane of sand and dust kicked up behind her swoop's drive. A landspeeder – purely repulsor magneto propulsion – would have been a wiser choice for this terrain. The intake valves on the bikes were going to need to be cleaned with a _calligraphy_ brush and some strong solvent after this misadventure.

Vast tracts of emptiness opened to either side of them, the reds and golds of Tatooine's virgin wastes like a surreal mirror-world, an ocean of _dryness,_ a sea washing against baren shores, sculpted islands of lifeless rock. He glimpsed geological strata, fantastic wind-carved pillars, ugly pustules of hardened lava. And everywhere the beating kiln of sun-drenched air, of cloudless naked sky and biting sand.

The duster was an indisputable blessing – as were the protective goggles and helmet. Their speed sent them plummeting headlong through a gusting dust-storm, a perpetual artillery of grit battering against their faces and bodies over the swoops' meager forward shielding.

At last Torbb skimmed to a halt at the crest of a mighty cliff, a place where tectonic uprising had thrust the desert plateau up at a wild angle, towering abysmally over the blood-dyed plains below. They dismounted and drank greedily of the tepid water-canteens.

The huge Knight gestured out over the ruddy landscape below, gloved finger tracing over the cratered and cracked expanse until it wavered in a northern direction. "Over there. In that canyon."

Obi-Wan trained macrobinoculars upon the dark cleft she indicated. A silver curve seemed to rise from its shadowed depths, an artificially perfect shape glinting dully in the twin suns' maniacal glare. "It could be a ship," he tentatively agreed, handing over the device.

Torbb had a leisurely look at the suspect object herself, then nodded. "Uticus' flagship. Good spot- sheltered, defensible, naturally insulated from extreme temperatures. He knows what he's about."

It was difficult to know with Torbb, but there might have been a note of _pride_ in the tone. Obi-Wan raised a brow. "Well, so long as he's a _worthy_ opponent," he quipped.

The tall woman gave him a very odd look, then turned back to studying the desert, long robes whipping in the hot breeze, black top-knot curling and streaming behind her. "And there's a kind of transport creeping up the far ridge. Might be a rendezvous."

But the younger Knight shook his head. "I had a look at the indigenous cultures database while we were in transit. There are native scavenging nomads out in the desert- junk dealers. Your friend Uticus would need a better client than that."

"I should have known you'd do your homework," Torbb grunted.

"The Hutts are a far likelier business partner," Obi-Wan pressed. "I would wager his first move will be a meeting with the local crime lord."

His companion pointed in the opposite direction. "Old B'Omarr monastery over there. Hutt owned?"

"Almost certainly. They own everything of interest here."

Torbb tossed the 'nocs back to him with a curt gesture. "Right," she decided, asserting the natural right of seniority. "We split up and reconnoiter. I'll take the native traders – you talk to the Hutts."

Obi-Wan rested one hand on his 'saber's pommel. "Your Huttese is better than mine," he objected.

A snort. "Your manners are better than mine. It's a draw. And you're looking sun-burned already."

Grimacing, he pulled his goggles back into place. The planet had a _hellish_ climate, that much was certain. Why anyone, even the galaxy's most desperate and destitute, would throng to this ruinous excuse for a world, was mystery beyond his ken. "Fine. Stay in comm contact."

He slung one leg over his bike's saddle and revved the compensator up, running a bit high. The drain on the power cell would be compensated for by the reduced risk of kicking up a stone into the undercarriage, and he would take stability over speed any day. Torbb saluted him and plunged headlong over the cliff, riding her own vehicle down the nearly sheer face at a daredevil's angle.

"Force," her mission partner breathed, turning his own swoop in a sedate semi-circle and setting off for the ancient monastery's squat cluster of domes. He hadn't bargained for making an impromptu social call upon the Hutts.. . how did he always manage to land himself in these uncivilized sort of situations?

He skimmed down the long incline toward the ragged folds of rock where the redoubtable fortress comfortably nestled, trying to remember whether _ch'upeemee_ _paka _meant "honored ambassador" or "bantha's areshole" in common Huttese idiom.

Such subtleties of connotation were crucial in many diplomatic settings – but here, he sardonically reflected, It probably wouldn't make much difference at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

At noon-hour Mos Espa sank into a comatose state; every business except Flaky's cantina closed its doors, animals snoozed in the scant shade of rickety shelters, pedestrians disappeared, vehicles came to a stand-still, folks went home for midday meal and –if they were lucky- a long afternoon snooze.

Anakin trotted eagerly along the back alleyways, keeping close to the packed earthen walls where the suns' rays did not beat so vehemently upon his head. The route home – to the slave quarter outside the mercantile district proper – was one his feet knew by instinct, leaving his head free to meander along whatever adventurous course it would choose: daydreams of travel, of heroic deeds, of having enough to eat. Of all three at once, when he was in a particularly ambitious and discontent mood. Today he was busy gestating his great scheme, his bid for freedom.

His plan was perfect, and failsafe, and so glaringly obvious he felt a pang of embarrassment at not having hit upon it before. As his mother often told him, he _could not_ have been born so talented, so special, for no reason. _Gifts are given to some people so that they may help others, _she always said. _The greatest problem in this universe is that people do not help one another._

Well, Anakin was about to help the one nearest and dearest to him right out of bondage. And that would only be the beginning of his fame and glory. He was going to _free_ the entire universe. Not just of slavery, but of hunger, and suffering, and injustice, and fear, and sorrow. Maybe, someday, he could even stop people from dying. Not like the B'Omarr monks did with their brain jars and stuff, of course – that was just _gross - _but in a real way. A way that mattered and made a difference.

His only worry was about telling Shmi. His mother might be a brave and wise woman, but she suffered from an irrational idée fixe when it came to Anakin's safety. She probably wouldn't even _hear_ what he was proposing, past the trilfing detail of mortal peril.

Kitster's mom wasn't any better, nor was any maternal figure in his limited experience. Even krayt dragon dams had a way of ripping the heads off people who got too close to the nest. It was a quirk of the profession, he supposed. But a troublesome one.

Because in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, Anakin was going to have to pilot his special, custom-built racing machine in the Boonta Eve Podrace. And win.

* * *

At noon-hour, the township's dissolute and thirsty denizens poured into the cantina en masse, filling the booths and tables to overflowing, keeping the four-armed barkeep hard at work filling demands for intoxicants suited to the palates and physiology of several dozen species. The hubbub swiftly swelled to a clamor, mercifully blotting out the subliminal blare of the holo-feed in the corner; the two-headed talk show host's inane babble faded into the murmurs of the crowd, preventing Qui-Gon Jinn from discovering whether a generously proportioned Seleucian starlet was or was not dating the decrepit but fabulously wealthy president of the local sector tibanna mining company.

Thus forever deprived of the day's most pressing intelligence, he was at liberty to eavesdrop shamelessly upon the eager press of neighbors, all of them bawling to be heard over the noon-time crowd, most of them enthusiastically chewing the cud of Tatooine's local gossip mill, or what passed for news on a star-forsaken dustball like this. He used the Force to attune his senses to this snippet of conversation, and then that, drifting among the idlers without moving an inch from his discreet vantage

"…so then the karking eopie decides to drop her calf, just, on the same day when the vaprorator kicks the bucket, and we've already sent the speeder up to Anchorhead for a shipment…"

"…kriffing little pizzmahs ripped me off, same as always. Next time them jawas come trading I ain't gonna buy a _damned_ thing. Not a coil condenser. _You k_now… bleeding heart neighbor syas they gotta make a living too but I don't give a flying fark. I'm gonna just make the trip into town instead, and _e'chuta_ to them…."

"So then he says four hundred _mila_ an' I says in your dreams, chuba buki…. Like Republic credits mean anything out here. I'll take the shirt off your back, I says, before I takes your money. These lousy _ootmian,_ they understand nothing…."

"… won the last triple crown out on Malastare. Got a chance out here, I think, but he's used to a refereed race, no dirty play. Might learn a thing or two out in the canyon. They say Boonta Eve's the real deal, no holds barred…"

"…How long you staying in town? Just for race day or you going to the auctions afterward? I got a sand skiff that can hold a score or two. Dancing girls, drinks…. Think about it, mate."

"…Yeah and so the barve runs off in the middle of the night and ol' Meerska says, to hell with it. Found that piece of pula's transmitter and set it off. The next morning they found bits of brain on the next dune, I swear. And none of his slaves'll ever _think_ about running off again, believe me…"

"….Got a wager on Sebulba, like always. It'll be the Dug's day again."

When a sallow and squat half-Gamorrean slid into the bench opposite with a wet grunt that might have been a request for permission, the Jedi master was prepared to make small talk.

"_Ootmian?"_ his new neighbor grunted, slurping the froth off his fermented _zoor._

"Just passing through, for the races," the tall man replied, affably.

A terse nod of the head. The newcomer wiped his tusks with the back of one huge hand. "Stay long?"

Qui-Gon raised his shoulders. "Ah well, wouldn't we all like to stay for the auctions, hm?"

"Eh." The snout-faced fellow bottomed-up his glass. "Gotta know somebody though, dontcha? Invite only," he snorted, contemptuously. "Karffing _ishzzlitar."_

"Quite."

Having apparently exhausted the possible topics of rational discourse, the half-Gam lapsed into a comfortable and besotted silence, calling for a second serving and a plate of food. The Jedi master leaned back into shadow, keeping his hood up. So the Hutts were hosting a _private_ black market auction here, after the big race on Boonta Eve. The local festivities provided ample incentive for outworlders to flock to the desert planet, and promised to put ready credits in buyers' hands. On worlds such as this, illegal commerce and gambling not only constituted the vast majority of real income, but also went hand in hand, one fueling the other. The HUtts, who owned syndicates at both end, profited endlessly without directly involving their slimy fingers in anything.

He discreetly sent a text-only transmission to Obi-Wan, keeping his commlink out of view beneath the table.

The pirate Uticus was surely here to deliver or sell goods for the event.

* * *

Obi-Wan shoved his commlink back into its belt pouch and shifted weight from foot to foot; the heated rock beneath his boots was searing unpleasantly through his nerfhide soles, and the gatekeeper was taking an unconscionably long time to respond to his summons.

He blinked sweat out of his eyes and cursed his loss of a proper Jedi cloak – the cowl would have nicely protected his head form the sun's assault. As it was, his hair felt as though it would spontaneously combust at any moment. Not even a drassil stirred in the noon-day heat. Tatooine's creatures were too smart to stand about in the sun like this. No, idiocy of that magnitude was reserved for _Jedi._

When at last a tiny aperture in the gates popped open with a sharp _click,_ he nearly jumped out of his skin. A globular optic sensor affixed to a rod thrust through the opening and peered critically at the visitor. From somewhere inside the citadel, a grating voice demanded his name and business in thick, guttural Huttese.

Shifting weight again, he folded his hands and opted for the direct approach. "Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, requesting an audience with the exalted lord of this palace." Whatever the avaricious barve's name might be, he mentally appended.

The artificial eye darted up, down, to either side. A snickering could be heard on the other side of the gate. "_Jeedai?"_ the voice repeated, incredulous.

Obi-Wan smoothed the folds of the duster and lifted his chin. Yet another reason to lament the lack of a proper _cloak. _Truth be told, he was beginning to not _like_ this planet, and its presumptive stereotyping. "_Yes."_

The ensuing silence was of uncomfortably long duration. "...Blast it." The Order was by no means honored out here, where the only rule was that of might, but the HUtts were too wily and complacent to make trouble when none was needed. He had anticipated a grudging and insincere welcome, not a cold shoulder. He was on the point of forcing the issue – no pun intended – when the rusty portico groaned into life, rumbling up from its moorings a scant meter and a half. Massive blunt teeth punctuated the moving wall's underside, designed to fit onto notches in the deep stone. As he ducked under the slab he noted that the durasteel panel was solid and a meter thick – there would be no easy _escape _through this door, though surely its primary function was insulator.

Inside, it was blessedly cool and dark. He breathed a sigh of gratitude –

-and then ducked.

A vibro-axe axe bit deeply into the wall above his head, loosing a small cascade of plaster and dust. Wheeling, he held out a hand and threw his assailant into the opposite wall. The guardsman crumpled and slid down to the packed floor, tongue lolling over slobber-coated tusks.

"Lovely."

The passageway ahead was clear. Behind him, the gates rolled shut with a deafening thunder of ancient pistons and overtaxed hydraulics, sealing him in blackness.

_Creak creak creak creak._

Hand hovering cautiously above his 'saber's hilt, he waited for the new threat to manifest itself; the Force was _oily,_ a viscous scum of diffuse vice floating on the slow currents, blending and oozing indiscriminately. The approaching person had no signature at all, oddly enough –

Or not. It was nothing but a droid.

The silver-bodied protocol unit had an insectoid head; such models were preferred by many of the galaxy's non-humanoid species. It bowed to him, curtly, and spoke in a grating warble he recognized as the gatekeeper's. The droid's optic plates gleamed dully as it noticed the slumped guard. "Oh dear," it remarked, lackadaisically.

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan replied, equally apathetic.

The droid was well-programmed in diplomacy , and switched tactics immediately.

"Welcome, honored ambassador," it rasped, in Basic. "The illustrious Jabba will condescend to receive you in his throne room."

The young Jedi bowed. "Thank you. Lead the way."

* * *

Shmi was appalled. "But Cliegg…. How in the worlds can you afford this?"

Lars was a pragmatic man. He patiently explained. "I told you. Bumper crop last season… and I've been saving for a while. I don't know why, just in case.. maybe Owen wanted to go to the Core when he's older. But he won't. He's fourteen and knows what he wants. He'll stay on the farm, take over when I'm too old. Maybe settle down. And I sold the combine and the mercerator to the Jawas. We can do without. And that ridge on the east side of the property.. I sold that to the Jenkks. Never gives a good yield anyway, and now their lads won't have to steal mushrooms from me. I've scraped and scrounged one way or another, but I never dreamed it would be enough. Not until I heard the stingy old barve was going bankrupt."

But Shmi shook her head, dark silver-fretted waves bobbing at her temples. Lars loved the way her hair came unbound from its simple braid, stuck in tiny tendrils to her worry-lined forehead, coiled just beneath her earlobes. "What about Ani?"

Ah. The sticking point. He took one of her calloused hands between his own. They were both weather worn, hard-beaten people.. but he rubbed a thumb appreciatively along her smaller fingers, silently pleading.

"Listen to me, darling. Please listen: Watto refused to sell the boy to me. I asked. I begged, _hama._ But the price he wants… I barely convinced him to let you go. He's going to sell _both_ of you, no matter what – you would be separated _no matter what,_ do you understand? At least come with me. We can… I don't know. Find out who has him, try to strike a bargain."

She was weeping. He couldn't stand it.

"Shmi- Shmi… I'll sell the farm, if that's what it takes! Anything to make you happy –"

But Shmi shook her head, blinking away moisture and bestowing upon him a smile of purest grace. "Cliegg. You cannot live without the farm. We would starve. " His heart leapt at the word _we. _"I know Ani will leave me someday – he is special, he is meant for something _more_ than this… but I can't leave him in slavery, when I am free. Don't you see?"

Cliegg buried his face in his hands, kneading at his aching temples, feeling the unshaven scruff upon his lined cheeks. "Gods, oh gods," he groaned, in utter frustration.

Somewhere, in the next room, a door clicked shut. Footfalls pattered away, swift and urgent.

Shmi's head came up, abruptly. "Ani?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 5**

The 'throne room' was, ironically, located in what had once been the B'Omarr monastery's central chapel, judging by the beautifully carved sanctuary screens partitioning the main nave from the adjoining aisles. Even more amusing – from a certain, and admittedly rather jaded point of view – was the fact that the "throne room" resembled nothing so much as a cheap Rugosan bordello, what with the scantily clad dancing girls writhing here and there, the heavy and choking miasma of hashaa weed clotting the already musky air, and the assorted scum and villainy lounging in the corners.

Obi-Wan's lip curled upon entering, but he swiftly composed himself into proper diplomatic neutrality. It would never do to offend his host, who was sprawling – or slouching, or… oozing- upon his throne, which was nothing more than a raised platform great enough to accommodate the Hutt's vast mountains of puckered and pimpled flesh.

The hashaa weed actually masked some of the Hutt's fetid stench, which was a small mercy. Coughing politely into a corner of his duster, the young Jedi followed his droid escort to the center of the floor, noting that the grill beneath his boots was likely a trap door opening to some subterranean monster pit.

The Hutts were predictable in their tastes, which ran to the ostentatious, the violent, and the crass.

"Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, here by the grace and mercy of the Inestimably Munificent Jabba," the protocol unit introduced the newcomer. In Basic. Meaning that the Hutt understood every word but merely kept the translator on as a show of prestige. Obi-Wan could almost _hear_ Dooku's dismissive perjorative: _nouveau riche._

The shapeless bulk upon its dais proved to have a vast and slippery slit-mouth, and two alarming gimlet eyes that opened out of its skull-less blob of a head. A blotchy purple tongue slid over the lipless curve and then retreated like a serpent tasting the air and finding it unsavory; a moment later the giant slug's booming voice rang out over the assembly, bringing all desultory conversation to a halt and riveting every attention upon the potential drama unfolding between trespasser and lord of the realm.

"Cheewanga, paka ch'upeemee Publikaner!" the Hutt roared, spreading two stunted arms wide in a dubiously sincere gesture of hospitality.

"You are most welcome, honored ambassador from the Core," the droid stuttered.

Its owner chuckled wetly, a disgusting gurgle sounding up from its gelatinous viscera. The Force shimmered with edged humor – confirming the young Knight's suspicion that _paka ch'upeemee_ did in fact mean 'bantha's arsehole.'

Two could play at that game. He folded his arms and dipped his head modestly. "I am undeserving of such fulsome praise when compared to the thrice-worthy Jabba, who is surely the most renowned exemplar of all such qualities."

The poor droid struggled over that for a moment, but dutifully translated into halting Huttese.

Jabba was not stupid; and now he knew that his visitor was not stupid, either. His eyes slatted, and he heaved his body into a more comfortable position, terraced fat-folds squelching as he shifted. "Hmmmmmmm!" he grumbled. Then, "A'kkutta!"

The protocol unit rendered this into : "Please tell us, oh respected guest, what favor the Surpassingly Illustrious Jabba may bestow upon you as a mark of esteem."

Obi-Wan's mouth quirked at one corner. _I'll bet that's what he said._ Subliminally aware of the half-dozen blasters surreptitiously trained on his back, he allowed one hand to drop beneath the folds of his duster, fingers tracing the curve of his 'saber's hilt. "I am here to conduct private business on behalf of the Galactic Republic. A wanted man, guilty of many crimes, is presently at liberty within your precincts. I request diplomatic courtesy; your gracious non-interference will be most appreciated."

The corpulent Hutt snorted, flat nostrils flaring in vexation. "E mana kobo ruche," he snapped.

Servos creaking in agitation, the droid spoke up again. "And what is the name of this person?"

"He is a smuggler and pirate known by the title Uticus."

"A namma Uticee a wanga shoshanee mupasa," the translator nervously relayed to its owner.

Jabba chortled, quadruple chins waggling as his mirth spilled over into booming sound. "Ahhhhh," he remarked, waving one pudgy hand. "Nopasa go heemee, tibi ma bukisi yoro. Gah pama!"

Positively wringing its own hands in distress, the droid cleared its vocabulator and risked performing its primary function. "The Pre-eminently Admirable Jabba knows this person well, and considers him a valuable and devoted colleague."

"Flies love their dung-heap," Obi-Wan quipped, sotto voce.

The droid's expressionless silver face blanched, if that were possible. Compassionate to a fault, the young Jedi came to its rescue. "No, don't translate that," he hastily added, "Say instead that I hope the… Peerlessly Expansive Jabba will consent to arrange a meeting with his_ colleague_. I am anxious to make his acquaintance."

The Peerlessly Expansive Jabba erupted into a prolonged retort without waiting for the translator. Flecks of spittle showered down in all directions, obliging the young Jedi to ward them off with a discreet use of the Force. Still, the Order's formidable reputation _did_ weigh something even out here; when the droid tremblingly rendered the irate discourse into Basic, it came out as a polite invitation to spend the evening as Jabba's guest, with the purpose of meeting Uticus the following morning, at which time he had a scheduled business appointment with the Hutt overlord himself.

Obi-Wan had weathered a night in less civilized environs. Most of them detention cells and one of them a _septic pit_, but that was an inconsequential detail.

"I accept your generous offer," he told the slimy villain, bowing obsequiously low.

* * *

"Whoa-ho, Buki! I thought I told you to _scram…go home, eh? _I'm closing the shop myself tonight."

Watto was always grumpy on money-counting night, and worse than usual this last six-month. Anakin was risking his own skin by disobeying.. but this was important.

He pitched his voice low, the way he did when he wanted to _make_ somebody listen, when he needed to make them _see._ "Mr. Watto sir, I really need to talk to you. About business."

The Toydarina fluttered nearer, curiosity and pique mingling in his bloodshot eyes. He'd been drinking a lot lately, too. You could smell the _zoor_ on his breath. "Bees-ness, eh? What about it?" came the suspicious reply.

Anakin turned a slow circle in place as his owner executed a hovering circuit above him, like a scavenger bird waiting for a desert bantha to expire. "It's about that farmer guy- the one that wants to buy my Mom from you."

Watto's bulging eyes bugged out further. "Eh, how do you know about that? Never mind, freak…. Tell me what you know, eh?"

"Well…" Here was the tricky bit – figuring out what the other person wanted to hear, what would give him _leverage._ Most people he could read like a book – he just got this tingly feeling in his gut, and he _knew_ what they wanted or were gonna do. But Watto was hard to read. He was sort of smoky, like a burned out motivator circuit relay. And Hutts were really hard, too – more like muddy, oily water . The most _opaque_ person Anakin had ever met was that kinda strange guy that had stopped by a few months back, the one that was friends with Mr. Qui-Gon sir. What was his name? Okinobi or something. He was like … a mirror. You tried to get a _feel _for him and all of a sudden he was all polished and reflective and you _bounced_ off him, like he did it on purpose. That was weird. But also sorta _wizard._

Maybe his Jedi friends taught him how to do that. Maybe his Jedi friend could teach _Anakin_ how to do that.

This arresting thought was driven from his head by a loud and impatient snort. "Well?" Watto shouted. "You got something to tell me or not?"

Sometimes it was hard to keep his mind from racing ahead. The rest of the world just moved so _slow._ "I do, I do! That farmer guy wanted to buy me, too, huh? He just wants me to work for him to fix stuff like I do for you. He doesn't even care about Mom, he just wants to buy her so maybe I'll try to run away to his farm or something and –"

"E'chuta!" the Toydarian exclaimed, snarling. He thrust a warning finger in his slave boy's face. "Don't try it, buki! I'm not a cruel being, but you shouldn't forget that slave implant -One false move and I can blow your brains out, eh?"

Anakin was far too wise to take this threat seriously; but he lived in secret and paralyzing dread that Watto would someday choose to punish his infractions by blowing SHmi's brains out in the exact manner described. The very thought sent a lightning bolt of ice down his spine, ignited a pool of liquid tibanna beneath his ribs.

The junk dealer mistook his distress for fear on his own account. "Never mind, buki," he assured his underling. "You're too valuable, eh? But don't get any ideas… I can still rip you a new one without blowing you away completely, heh heh heh."

Deliberately unclenching both fists, Anakin somehow unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "I think you should gat that farmer guy back for plotting to steal me."

Watto liked petty revenge, especially if its terms and conditions were amenable to his cowardice. The suggestion of thievery was, for him, tantamount to both evidence and conviction. Already Lars had been categorized as another swindler out to ruin the Toydarian. "You're right," he agreed, slamming one balled fist into the opposite hand. "Teach him a lesson, eh?"

"Yeah. If you ask him for more money for Mom and me, like you're really willing to sell both of us, then he'll have to find a way, right? And then if you kinda accidentally on purpose give him a bad tip on the Boonta Eve Race…."

Watto cackled in glee. "Then he bets all his moolasa on the _wrong pod_ and he goes broke!" A rapturous flight about the shop's ceiling ensued. "That'll teach him to try pulling a fast one on old Watto, ha! We'll see who's bankrupt now, eh?"

The world was out to get Watto, and so Watto was out to get the world. Anakin grinned, feeling victory gathering on the horizon like the legendary rain-clouds of far away worlds. Everything would be okay. Lars would go away, and Shmi would be free, and Anakin would be a hero.

"But…. I don't know.. .he's sure to ask around town, you know? Who should I tell him to bet on?'

"Sebulba," Anakin confidently replied.

"But he's the favorite! I'm putting my money on Sebulba too, you know. He's going to win. He always does."

"No he's not. Not _this_ year. He's gonna lose this time, and if you bet _against _him you could get all your money back, too, Mr. Watto sir."

"What are you talking about, freak-o? Sebulba _always_ wins."

"Yeah," Anakin said, a fierce _song_ rising inside his chest, a war cry like krayt dragon screaming in the desert waste, proclaiming its supremacy over rock and wind. "But that's 'cause he's never raced against _me."_

Watto goggled, fat nasal appendage dangling comically to one side.

And then Anakin took the junk-shop dealer – the sleazy, conniving, slave-owning, money-grubbing _sleemo - _into his confidence. Desperate times made for strange allies, after all.

* * *

Tatooine sunsets were slow and leisurely affairs, light _bleeding_ in bright rivulets of crimson and scarlet across the pain-wracked sky. No swift extinction of day into night here – no, the cruel heavens of this planet lingered over their task, like a skilled tormentor drawing out his victim's pain into exquisite degrees.

The Hunter savored every moment of the long descent, nostrils flaring as he scented the invisible wind, the subtle currents pulsing beneath the mere hot overn-blast of the baked earth. High on a stone column frozen in twisted agony, he surveyed the desert dunes in all directions, waited for his emissaries to return. They came in due time, black specks on the horizon growing to the silhouettes of sleek probe units. They carried news of his quarry, of the feeble and futile struggles of his foes.

There was no escape, not from this grim and lifeless arena. He had but to wait, and choose his path carefully, as he had been trained.

And meanwhile, the suns melted into liquid fire, a rim of angry luminance sizzling between rock and sky at the border of night. Stars peeped out one at a time, aligned themselves in foreign constellations, took up places like spectators in a grim colosseum, eager for blood and victory.

Their chosen gladiator would not disappoint. He had the power of Darkness on his side.


	6. Chapter 6

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 6**

At nightfall, the Jawa women clustered round their visitor, a frantic gaggle of crudely-robed figurines clucking and squawking in distress. Surrounded by a sea of small, pestering hands and glowing optic filters, Torbb Bakk'ile stood like a monumental rock amid a dark and churning sea. She could not claim fluency in the native tongue – but the Force conveyed more than sufficient images and emotions for her to piece together the urgent entreaties.

The sandcrawler had chugged to a standstill for the night, its power generators cycling down for a cooling phase – but the massive conveyance was still far from its intended destination, the rim plateau on the desert's southern side. Mental pictures of migratory camps – Tusken, Jawa, human, a mélange of outcasts and hermits – flashed across the tall Jedi's mind. Among those who habitually dwelt upon the edge of the waste was a haggard old woman who _helped_ the mothers in their time of ordeal.

And her services were needed this night.

Torbb found herself unceremoniously shepherded inside the crawler's cavernous interior. A long ramp led up into the vast hull, a warren of storage bays and connecting passages with ceilings so low she barely cleared them even at an acute stoop. Deeper and deeper the Jawa women herded her, until she had wound up through the working levels to a cramped residential deck on the upper reaches. In this echoing cave of metal and recycled plastoid paneling, light was dim and sound skittish, difficult to track. The broad-framed Knight crawled on hands and knees to the place her insistent hosts showed her, and then arranged her lanky limbs into a compact-ish knot, meditation lotus.

It was still a snug fit.

One or two of the males appeared in a hatchway and were banished amid shrieks of disdain and outrage; the assembly drew close together surrounding the rag-strewn palette and the tiny figure that lay moaning and thrashing amid its twisted covers. Without the obscuring protective robes, a Jawa was more frail and shriveled than one might imagine; Torbb imagined her grip breaking this poor creature's bones, inadvertently. The mother to be was no more than a girl, really – though it was impossible to gauge her age by appearance, the Force fairly rang with childish terror and no small degree of protective concern from the crones in the gathering.

Torbb's stern mien softened, as she leaned in closer, spreading one hand on the struggling girl's taut belly, round and swollen with child. A tiny new life fluttered valiantly beneath her touch, a fire mingled and twined with the mother's pulsing signature. All was well – the labor pangs were simply what they were. Some had it easier, some harder; nature was not _fair _in this regard, whether among species or individuals.

"There is nothing wrong," she told the anxious onlookers. One or two of the elders translated to their sisters, evoking a textured medley of mutters and chattering. The girl screamed and rolled her head, vainly seeking to escape her own body. Torbb's dark brows contracted. She was neither a trained healer nor obviously an expert in this field - but the universal Life energy would guide her well enough. And if it was the Force's will that she buy the cooperation of these diminutive nomads with an act of compassion, then she would do what she must.

The Jawa girl's screams hit a panicked crescendo.

"Peace, little one. Own it – it is yours, your work, your strength. Let the pain flow _through you."_

Uncomprehending, the wailing mother merely threw back her head and moaned piteously, a wavering ululation of distress. The crones dithered and gabbled among themselves, poking tiny gloved fingers into Torbb's back and shoulders, thrusting exotic unguents and reeking smudge pots beneath her nose.

The enormous Knight coughed and waved the offerings away, smoothing the afflicted girl's brow with one hand and a nudge of the vivifying Force, and stalwartly ignoring the drone-like chant initiated by her audience.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Qui-Gon found himself intercepted en route to the slave quarter.

"Mister Qui-Gon sir! Wait for me!"

The tall Jedi slowed his ground-eating pace to accommodate his young acquaintance. Anakin's face was smudged with dark oil, or rust, and his unruly mop of golden hair ruffled by the incessant desert wind.

"You're late getting home," he observed.

The boy pattered up beside him, shrugging his slender shoulders. "I had to talk to Watto about something," he said, an undercurrent of defensiveness now tainting his otherwise innocent tones.

The Jedi master extended a tentative mental probe, wondering what skullduggery the Toydarian might be about; the threat of financial ruin was almost as powerful a motivator as greed – and the junk shop dealer hadn't the faintest scrap of honor about him. To his surprise, the subtle inquiry was rebuffed, with the reflexive ease of a trained master. The boy's mind was like the surface of a dark lake, reflecting light and shadow but revealing nothing of its own depths. The effect was startling in one so young; at this age – no, _older_ than this even- Obi-Wan had been an open holo-book, spitfire eloquence and bravado poorly concealing whatever thoughts and feeling seethed beneath the surface.

But then, Anakin had been born and raised a slave. Life was preeminently _adaptable._

"I'm gonna be nine this year," the boy informed him, non sequitur. "Do you think that's old enough to travel to all the stars?"

Caught off guard yet again, Qui-Gon raised both brows and spared the eager urchin a smile. "You have plans to go spacefaring?"

"Well, I'm gonna be the first person to see _all_ the star systems. The ones with people on them, anyway. How many are there, Mister Qui-Gon sir?"

He chuckled at the sheer audacity of this plan. "Ten thousand inhabitable in the Republic alone," he mildly answered. "To see them _all_ would be a feat indeed."

"Have you been to a lot of them? I bet you have. I bet you've got like souvenirs and stuff from all over the galaxy."

"I have memories, and those will suffice. "

They entered the central courtyard, a barren stretch of hard-packed earth about which hardened clay dwellings clustered in a protective circle. The slaves here on Tatooine did not fare much worse than their owners; the need for proper shelter from sandstorms meant that they were accommodated in thick-walled huts, insulated and heavily roofed. Most the poor farmers in the wastelands could not brag such domiciles – on such a harsh world, bondage could often mean a degree of security unavailable to the impoverished free. Anakin's mother was fortunate to be owned by a merchant such as Watto; her life here was kinder than that she would suffer at eth hands of the HUtts, and less peril fraught than a pioneer existence on the desert frontier, where hostile marauders roamed and the elements themselves conspired to stamp out tenacious life.

"Mom! Moooooooooom!" Anakin hollered, with a lack of decorum never seen within the Temple's hallowed halls.

Shmi – for the dark haired women who appeared in a backlit doorway must be she - wiped hands upon her frayed skirts. Her lined face melted in relief at the sight of her offspring. "Oh, Ani! I was worried… it's past dark and – oh."

"This is Mister Qui-Gon, Mom. He's a _Jedi. _And he knows that other guy I told you about. That came a while back."

The woman's limpid eyes gleamed momentarily, but they did not hold the same wild hope that Anakin displayed. She was a being who had _bent_ in the tempest winds of fate, mastered acceptance and patience early in her life. The appearance of a legendary warrior-monk upon her doorstep inspired nothing more than mild curiosity. "You are welcome, sir."

The tall man laid a hand on Anakin's shoulder. "Your son was kind enough to ask me to dine with you tonight." At the look of alarm this produced, he swiftly added, "I have brought a few things from the marketplace, if your hospitality will permit."

"Please, come in," the lady of the house said, accepting the intrusion upon her downtrodden existence with a rare equanimity. "Guests are always welcome."

* * *

Obi-Wan chuckled at the Hutt overlord's notion of guest accommodations.

His allotted suite was admirably _escape proof,_ being outfitted with two small grilled windows well above eye level, and outfitted with a heavy pressure seal door opening onto a dank hallway. The accommodations reflected a Hutt-ish tatse in luxury – a single enormous rolling trundle clearly meant as sleep platform dominated the small chamber. Synthsilk pillows and velvetar cushions were piled high atop this dais, a hecatomb of comfort and decadence. Chandrilan incense burned inside a small brazier, perfuming the already stifling air; a single chandelier cast warm splashes of orange and gold upon the worn flagstones and flaking frescoes.

An inspection of the least damaged artwork revealed what might be a creation scene from the B'Omarr sacred texts. Bodiless intellects represented by winged eyes roamed amid a lush paradise antithetical to Tatooine's arid expanse. All manner of creatures crawled among the painted foliage and earth – including some fancifully depicted worms that might be Jabba in his grub phase. The young Jedi's mouth twisted wryly – how far from this idyllic scene did the present historic moment fall. The B'Omarri had long ago been reduced to grotesque mechanized cyborgs, while the frolicking worm in the painting was now a bloated and malevolent crime lord, before whom many being groveled and squirmed in submission.

Art did not always imitate nature.

He cast a contemptuous eye upon the decanter of dark liquid left for his delectation, and tossed the least effete of the cushions upon the floor and settled atop it, pulling his legs up under him. He still had much to learn – but he was not so foolish as to risk _sleeping_ under a Hutt's roof. He closed his eyes and reposed in a light meditative trance, mind expanding outward to embrace the whole palace and the impalpable pulse of desert life beyond it.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

"It's been a long night, Ani.. why don't you get to bed?"

The snub-nosed boy turned pleading eyes upward to his mother. "Aw, Mom – pleeeeeeeease?"

Shmi's gentle visage hardened into a mild frown. "You need to mind me," she said. "Go. _Go."_

Crestfallen, Anakin licked his fingers – Qui-Gon had not neglected to provide honeyed _barkalva_ for dessert – and shuffled away to his tiny bedchamber, a closet-like alcove at one end of the snug dwelling.

"He can be very stubborn at times," Shmi apologized.

"A common trait in boys his age," the Jedi master assured her. _Or any age. _"He is a very bright lad. You are lucky to have such a son."

This praise elicited a warm smile, the Force warming with maternal pride.

And now the more difficult part of the negotiations. "He is strong in the Force."

Shmi smiled, hesitantly, clearly not comprehending the implications. _Strong_ was an understatement; the boy fairly _throbbed_ within the universal energy, a pulsing nexus ready to explode into supernova or collapse into a black hole at any moment. Untrained talent was like a live bomb; and Anakin possessed more than mere talent, though it was clear he lived in ignorance of his true gift. Slavery had ironically saved him from arrogance- born into oppression, he accepted his precocity as a means of survival, nothing more.

"He is very special," the lady agreed, struggling to express the same idea in familiar language. "I feel as though he was born for a purpose.. something greater than this life I have given him." Her head dipped in shame.

She had no cause for such shame, but there was a more pressing question at hand. Qui-Gon opted for the direct approach. "Who is the father?"

The dark-haired woman's eyes shadowed over. She shook her head, in bemusement. "There was none."

Pity welled in the tall man's heart. The Force rang sonorously with Shmi's sincerity; the rest was a story he knew all too well, in its myriad forms.

"I… I bore him, I birthed him, I raised him," the mother insisted. "I'm sorry. I can't explain."

And she needed no further explanation, either; hers was a bone-deep wisdom, the instinctive and ruthless acceptance of a desert creature, a psyche honed to survival and looking only forward, never back.

Qui-Gon nodded, accepting that _this_ was the truth to which the woman must perforce cling, the only sane and salutary point of view available to her. Compassion bade him hold his tongue. "I see," he replied, gently.

And with the broaching and answering of this awkward question, the audience came to an end. "I must retire," the lady mumbled. "We rise early to work, and … you sir surely have important tasks to be about."

He thanked her gallantly for her hospitality and departed, bowing low upon the threshold and retreating into the rapidly cooling night, where he could wander at leisure beneath the crisp stars, and contemplate the enormity of the present moment, the timeless _now _pregnant with a trembling, incomparable epiphany.

It was a long night, but he did not notice the slow-wheeling procession of the stars, nor count the passing hours.


	7. Chapter 7

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 7**

Well before dawn, Obi-Wan was graced with a nocturnal visitor.

Of the stealth assassin variety.

Sadly for the advanced model recon hunter-killer independent AI model droid, he was not only _on guard,_ but positively spoiling for the long-anticipated fight. Sitting meditation lotus for seven hours while waiting for one's back-stabbing host to send in a villain to dispatch one is, perhaps, all in a routine day's job for a Jedi Knight (foolish enough to attempt diplomatic bargaining in the far Rims) but that does not make it any less wearisome. Jedi _do_ engage in other activities besides contemplating their own navels while waiting for the obligatory murder attempt; in this case, the Jedi in question hadn't enjoyed a decent sparring match in _days._

His saber practically screamed with joy as the sapphire blade leapt from its hilt, tracing an elaborate calligraphic flourish in the dark, musty air of the guest chamber. The intruder – which had obviously been outfitted with a master code-key to all the suites – leapt through the door and sprang into impressively acrobatic action, reticulated limbs carrying it in a weird dervish-dance around the room's perimeter, small but deadly blaster arm spewing a hailstorm of double-impulse disruptor bolts at its intended target.

The space was far too cramped for Ataru, and Makashi seemed too… sedate .. for such a gymnastic opponent, so Obi-Wan instantly shifted into a classic Soresu defensive pattern, deflecting the barrage of lethal energy packets into walls, ceiling and floor, his 'saber howling in delight as it spun in a tight and blinding tracery about his body. Plaster showered down, bits of stone and tile exploded in all directions, one of the window grates was reduced to smoking slag, a roof girder was exposed, the fresco was annihilated, the synthsilk pillows caught on fire and sent billows of soft feathers whirling in the over-heated air.

Grinning, the young Jedi rolled under the next attack, blocked two more shots, ducked a third, and neatly carved off his assailant's weapon arm.

The droid walloped him squarely in the jaw with its free left, sending him tumbling backward over the rolling trundle platform, saber clattering into a corner. The grotesque bundle of limbs was atop him in an instant, now sporting a built-in shiv edged in ominous acrid yellow. Its first strike missed by a millimeter, sinking into the wooden edge of the sleep-platform just shy of its foe's neck. Two solid kicks and a Force-push sent it skittering across the dais; Obi-Wan summoned his weapon back into his hand – and twisted hard to avoid the colwar-leap of the assassin droid as it recovered. They circled, passed, feinted and reversed – and then –

The automated killer lunged in again, going for the jugular, and ended up taking the 'saber pommel square in its single optic receiver. Its narrow, cylindrical head spun, shorted out, and was swiftly separated from its torso by a backhanded _shoto_ –technique _sai cha._

Sometimes he liked to mix things up a bit, just for the sake of style.

"Match point," he announced, airily, prodding the inert scraps with the toe of one boot. Temple rumor spoke of droids with "second brains" that would activate after the main processor was fried… but this model did not seem to be so superfluously endowed.

Of course, that was the end of his opulent guest accommodations, too. The fresco was a ruinous mess, the air was scorched and reeked of toxic effluvia, and some of the violet plush cushions were still smoldering wrecks. He rubbed at his bruised jaw, scooted the sole intact cushion into the adjoining corridor, and spent the remainder of the night meditating in peace.

* * *

At firstdawn, the shrill squeal of newborn life shattered the desert silence; a dozen Jawa crones huddled close about the mother and her impossibly fragile, squirming babe, effectively closing Torbb out of the circle.

The tall woman breathed out and scooted back against the bulkhead, topknot brushing the cabin's roof. Beneath them, around them, the sandcrawler's mass shuddered and groaned, laboring not to bring forth life but merely to gather enough impetus to move up the vast dune ahead. The giant vehicle's occupants chattered and scuttled about, momentarily forgetting their visitor in the excitement.

But not for long. Once the creaking mass had lumbered painstakingly to the crest of the next barren hill, the women folk of the tribe again surrounded their Jedi guest, this time pressing a heavily swathed bundle into her arms, their tiny gloved hands prodding and petting as they deposited the warm knot of winding cloths and tiny limbs in her keeping.

A continuous babble of instructions and entreaties followed, one she could not hope to interpret without the Force's aid.

"Peace, sisters, peace," she implored the chattering coterie, projecting a generous degree of _suggestion _ into her voice. Some of the frantic yammering died down, allowing a few brief impressions – no more than images, hints of distant memory, vague emotion – to settle in the Force's choppy currents like silt sinking to a riverbed's murky bottom.

The child- a knot of swaddling no larger than a hoverball from the Temple crèche playroom – fit within one of Torbb's broad hands. She looked into the miniscule Jawa's glittering eyes and frowned in consternation.

It would appear she was the honorary _godmother _ of this unlikely scion of the desert, expected to sponsor the child in some traditional naming ritual. The baby merely hiccupped and wailed for nourishment, prompting one of the most shriveled of the attendants to whisk her out of the towering Knight's incompetent grasp.

The crawler throbbed and chugged beneath her; the Jawa women subsided into content muttering; the Force eddied and swirled auspiciously, encouraging her to linger, and learn.

She knelt within the monstrous vehicle's belly and waited, as the ruddier of the two suns clambered its lethargic way into Tattooine's heat-scoured skies.

* * *

Just after second dawn, Mos Espa was abuzz with gossip and speculation.

Boonta Eve loomed near – and that meant a festival, a blessed hiatus from work and the dreary struggle for existence. True, the holiday as such had little meaning to most natives, being the anniversary celebration of an ancient Hutt victory over the Parliament of Moralan; nor had most of them any idea whom Boonta the Hutt might have been nor what his accomplishment. But any day on which business ceased, drink flowed in the streets, and the quotidian pastime of _gambling _ was temporarily exalted to the status of a sacred rite was a day on which any citizen of Mos Espa was proud to be a Tatooinian.

And this year there was _news._ Watto the junk dealer had finally gone off his head and made a last minute entry to the Boonta Eve Classic, the annual podracing event that drew a hundred thousand spectators from every forgotten nook and cranny of the Rim territories. Not only illegal inside Republic boundaries, the sport had the additional appeal of being dangerous, cutthroat, and virtually un-refereed. The little Toydarian had publicly fronted the money to enter some hacked-together scrap heap (probably manufactured from spare parts that wandered through his shady dealership, though nobody could say _how_ a functioning podracer might be engendered from such useless trash) – and then had doubled the occasion for scandal and mockery by announcing that his slave boy would pilot the rockety contraption against the best contenders in the wide and ruthless racing world.

His _human_ slave boy. It was a well known fact that humans were totally incapable of podracing - it simply required reflexes far past their natural limits.

Which argument was made loudly and emphatically by Kitster ChanChani Benai, much to Anakin Skywalker's vexation.

"Don't be _stupid,"_ the dark-haired lad insisted. "You can't do it. No human can do it."

But Anakin was not one to be intimidated by anything as abstract as statistics or generalities. "Well, maybe I'm the only human who _can," _ he retorted, bottom lip protruding stubbornly. "I'v e taken it out a few times past the Rift for a trial lap. It's _easy."_

"Yeah, maybe in the open like that. But we're talking about a race. You're bugsquat."

But the new celebrity would hear none of it. "I'm gonna finish and I'm gonna win," he asserted.

Kitster was a kind soul, and cynical enough at nine years old to suspect foul play. "I dunno what you did to make him so mad, but Watto just wants to see you killed. You should run away."

His best friend scowled. "Like that's happening." They were both slaves; Kitster, however, entertained vague hopes of his pirate father returning someday to rescue him . Anakin, being both fatherless and impatient, was determined to take matters into his own hands.

"Besides, I don't need to run away. I don't _run away_ from anything. This race is gonna make me rich. I'm gonna buy me and mom out of slavery, and maybe you too! And whoever else I can afford. How many slaves do you think the prize money is worth?"

His enthusiasm kindled a rare light of hope in the other boy's dark eyes – but the ember was swiftly extinguished by pragmatism. "Who says you're getting any prize money? Even if you were the champion – by some _miracle- _ Watto would just keep all the cash. You're a slave… he gets whatever you win."

The bitter truth fell through Anakin's interior heaven like a burning meteor, one that left an aching crater of resentment in its wake. Some things are too obvious to be noticed; others too awful to be mentioned. In this case, Kitster's observation was both at once, and precipitated the only possible reaction an almost-nine year old slave boy might be expected to make.

They were rolling in the dusty gutter of the marketplace when their angry tussle was overshadowed by an impressive, dark-robed figure. A moment later, an invisible hand seemed to part the madly scuffling opponents, holding them effortlessly at bay as they panted and strained to renew hostilities.

"What's this about?" a smooth, mellow voice inquired – with just enough authority to discourage any flippant response. Both boys looked up and up into the face of the intruder, and gasped.

"Uh," Kitster stammered.

"Mister Qui-Gon sir!" Anakin exclaimed, instantly deflating.

The tall Jedi squatted down between the two irate boys. "We've not been introduced," he addressed the dark-haired lad.

Keeping his gaze down, as befitted a slave, Kitster mumbled his name and squirmed on the spot. "Please don't tell my master," he begged.

Qui-Gon's brows rose. "Suppose you explain the dispute to me, then."

Anakin jumped into the fray both feet forward. "He says humans can't podrace," he snorted, reverting to the earliest offense committed against his sensibilities.

"We can't! " the other boy scoffed. "You know it's true!"

"I bet you've seen podracing, Mister Qui-Gon sir. Ever see a human pilot a pod?"

The Jedi master considered. "No, I've not. At least not on Malastare."

Anakin was livid with envy. "Awwww! You've seen the _Circus Morticus_ races?"

"I have. Very fast. _Very _dangerous."

"Dangerous," Kitster repeated, sagaciously.

Anakin stuck his tongue out.

"However," Qui-Gon continued, standing, and laying a hand on either boy's shoulder, "Not worth breaking a friendship over."

Chastised, the pair shook hands – spit and slap style, according to Huttese custom – and grinned sheepishly at one another. Kitster muttered several shame-faced excuses and absented himself as speedily as possible, leaving Anakin alone in the company of his mysterious acquaintance.

"Anakin."

The tow-headed child squinted up at the sun-limned silhouette above him, twisting his mouth to one side in bemusement. "Are you gonna go to the Boonta Eve Classic?" he inquired.

"Should I?"

"Yeah! It'll be wizard, way better than the Circus on Malastare, even! I'm gonna race and _win._ You should come and see it!"

Qui-Gon' s craggy features contracted in a small frown. "Watto has entered you into the race?"

Anakin's chest swelled with pride. "Yup. I'm the only human _and_ the youngest pilot ever to fly in a sanctioned event. Rugged, huh?" A second, and disconcerting, thought inserted itself between dreams of glory and technical musings. "But don't tell Mom, okay?"

The tall man steered his small companion into the shade of the nearest vendor's awning. "Deception is not the Jedi way."

"Really?" Anakin's snub nose wrinkled in confusion. "Cause maybe you should tell your other friend that. The one who came before."

"Obi-Wan, you mean?"

"Yeah him. 'Cause he ripped ol' Watto off like a wily Jawa trader, only better, It was kinda wizard, actually."

Qui-Gon's mouth thinned, into a wry grimace. "I daresay it was. "

"Can I show you my racing pod?" Anakin enthused. "It's the Fastest Ever Built. I made it myself from spare parts and stuff. What I really want to build is a protocol unit to help mom but there's never any cybernetics parts to spare and I can't find a manual to download for free. Droids are wizard – I bet I could make the best one ever, too! Do you know a lot about droids, Mister Qui-Gon sir? They don't let 'em in the race 'cause it's for sentients only and you know what? They don't let 'em in the cantinas either but I can't figure out why not. Hey! You know what – "

The tall man stemmed the tide with one raised hand, his memory flashing back on another bright and garrulous youngling, one whose prattle revolved not about droids and racing machines but around the cultural customs of Vetruvia and the laborious history of the Teth dynastic succession.

"Anakin," he said, solemnly. "" I need to speak to you. About something very, very important."


	8. Chapter 8

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 8**

Anakin downed his fourth cup of blue milk with an enthusiasm bordering on desperation. The child seldom, if ever, had enough to eat – that much was apparent to any observer.

"I really gotta go, Mister Qui-Gon sir, or Watto will be _choobazzi_ mad."

The tall Jedi nodded. " I understand. But will you promise to think about what I told you?"

Nose crinkling, the prodigy gave his mute assent. "But….I mean, does studying the Force mean going to a _school? - _ 'Cause there's no way I'm going to school. Ever." Anakin folded his arms obstinately. "School is for chumps and _schuzzo'chi."_

" I think your mother would want you to attend school, if you had the opportunity," the Jedi master gently admonished. "And you are swift to judge that which you have never experienced."

The reminder did nothing to erode the child's certainty. "I don't know… I mostly learn whatever I want without help. I don't think I need any teachers."

"I am sure you have," Qui-Gon replied, levelly. "But the ways of the Force are not something you can learn from a cybernetics instruction manual."

Anakin shrugged, still not entirely convinced. Then a happier thought struck him. "Are you a teacher, Mister Qui-Gon?"

"All of us are. The oldest and wisest Jedi alive teaches our smallest younglings."

"That's weird," Anakin declared. "No offense."

They stood, and Qui-Gon paid the food vendor for her goods, wrapping the extra portions in a slip of cloth and handing them to the half-starved slave boy. "Here. For later. Promise me you will give it due consideration."

The boy scratched perplexedly at his scalp. "Okay, I will." He hesitated, lingering in the tall man's shadow as though magnetically anchored in place, torn between the certitude of his familiar milieu and the allure of the unknown, the broader world. "Umm… thanks."

"You are welcome, my small friend."

"Bye!" The child scampered away, tearing down Mos Espa's dusty alleys like a womprat fleeing a predator.

The suns gradually climbed higher, deepening the sky to an abysmal bright blue.

* * *

Beneath that glazed dome, the Watcher lay splayed upon the already burning sands. His black robes soaked in the heat like greedy mouths; beneath his back, the very earth scorched and sizzled with stored fire. He was hammered between two infernos, filled with _hate._

It felt wonderful.

Here, where Light and Dark flowed pure and unsullied, thinned to transparency, oily distillations trickling over the marble-hard surface of this barren world, he could trace the patterns of fate easily, see connections, weave among the threads like an arachnid laying its net. He had seen his foes, noted their movements, watched and waited. And now he would build his snare, lay out the irresistible bait and reel in his prey, step by step.

Here, Life craved itself, consumed itself for want of other nourishment. Every living thing in the desert hungered for another: the carcass of one creature was a siren call to others; their fallen corpses an allurement to yet others, and so on, humblest to mightiest. Even the vast krayt lizards became food for their own kind, when they died - nothing was so majestic that it could not be trapped by the law of death. The blood of simple beasts spattered upon the sand would call others more fearsome, and others after them; the cadaver of a monster would summon the desert's wide-eyed settlers; the massacre of such innocent fools would bring the older Jedi winging to the scene; and his blood would cry out to the younger one, the _Chosen._ To capture an angel, one had but to slaughter a lamb, set in motion an exquisite cascade of destruction.

He rose, and stalked in the direction of the eopie herd he had spied the evening previous, twin suns burning above and within, the Dark frivoling in the sweep of his cape, the yellow pit of his eyes.

Soon, he would prove his worthiness, and claim the title Darth.

_Lord_. With but one master… and the bottomless night at his command.

* * *

Cliegg really needed to get back to the farm; the vaporators could store collected moisture up to forty-eight standard without overloading, but the purity would be compromised if he let it go that long. And any claim without a homesteader physically present on the premises was just asking for trouble. He, and his father before him, had learned this the hard way. He'd meant to leave before dawn, like any sensible person, but it was too damn hard to leave Shmi behind knowing that the accursed auction would occur the day after tomorrow.

He couldn't lose her, not like that. Not when he had enough money in his pocket to _buy_ their happiness. Well, not quite enough, as it turned out.

He'd stopped for a drink in the cantina. Cliegg was abstemious as a rule, but if any man deserved to drown his sorrows, surely it was one who had renounced love after bitter loss, only to rediscover it late in life, only to have it snatched from him again by something as damning and irrefutable as impecuniousness. The local ale was murky and bitter, like destiny.

He ended up having three, and then he loitered a bit longer, avoiding the morning glare, idly procrastinating. That's when he noticed Watto the junk dealer holding court with some of the bookies in for the big event. The stout Toydarian was holding forth loudly and brashly about the virtues of his slave boy and predicting an upset win. Most the bar's patrons scoffed or laughed into their grimy cups. Everybody knew that there wasn't a human born who could _podrace._

Cliegg contemplated the foamy dregs of his last glass. The thing was, Shmi's son was…. _different._ Spooky, almost, though he would never say it to Shmi and he would adopt the lad in a heartbeat to make her happy. But the boy had…_ something about him. _ The way he looked a a piece of machinery and could fix it without consulting a schematic. The way he disappeared when he wanted to. The way he seemed to know what was coming, sometimes, or what folks were thinking. The way some animals raised their hackles when he walked by.

Lars was a pragmatic man, and the scraps of education he'd gleaned for himself along the way were all of a stolidly materialistic bent. He didn't believe in hokey old religions, or Knights and Wizards, or happy fairy tale endings. But he did believe in luck and far-fetched odds. Anyone who made his living off collecting moisture from Tatooine's miserly skies had to. So when the tall, groove-faced offworlder bookie sarcastically offered Watto _thousand-to-one_ odds on his slave boy winning the Boonta Eve Classic, Cliegg's ears perked up.

Shmi believed in her son, even though she'd never confided the father's identity to Lars. Maybe she didn't know, and was shamed. And Cliegg, in his turn, believed in Shmi. He'd risk _everything _ for her – a humble man's one act of courage, one last act of defiance against the yoke of his inherited lot in life.

He got up, faced the bookie square, and gambled every last penny of his savings on that thousand to one bet. The cantina's patrons milled about him, sneering and chortling. The bookie took the money, gladly enough, and waved him away with a sad, knowing look stamped on his lined features.

Cliegg caught Watto's bulging eye, nodded once, and left, chin held high. He'd cast his chance cubes; let them fall as they might. Nobody could say he'd had an opportunity and let it slip, and if he lost everything on the wager, it would make no difference anyway. Without Shmi in his life, he was _utterly_ broke.

As soon as the farmer had made his exit, Watto the Toydarian guffawed loudly and gripped the bookie by one elbow.

"Heh heh.. a fool and his money are soon parted, eh?"

He promptly laid everything he had to spare, and a little more, on Sebulba the Dug.

Anakin was good, sure…. But Sebulba was going to _win._

* * *

Jabba the Illustrious slept late , by Tatooinian standards. Not that any of his cowering retinue or retainers would dare accuse the vast slug-like crimelord of _indolence._ Such brazen displays of disrespect were likeliest to end in a one way ticket to the Hutt's private rancor pit. Or worse. Of late, he had taken a fancy to feeding people – alive- to the sarlaac rumored to dwell in the tartarus-depths of the Great Pit of Karkoon.

So they held their tongues, rose early to work, and called the hour when their slimy master finally roused himself "first hour" – regardless of the suns' stations in the sky. At that time, vats of bitter arjees were prepared and the steaming concoction distributed to all and sundry, while the more mellow musicians strummed a gentle tune on mandol and ioli.

At noon, Obi-Wan was waiting in the throne room along with the Hutt's other esteemed guests when Jabba finally deigned to squirm and wriggle his way onto the sagging platform that served as high dais. Watching the gelatinous body heave and undulate its way across the floor and onto the raised wooden palette was… nauseating. He kept his expression neutral, recalling that ideals of beauty and grace were somewhat species- relative. In his own circle, Jabba might be considered a paragon of virility.

Well. He _might. _One never knew.

A Twi"Lek slave girl handed round steaming cups of argees, brewed black as the night sky and with a sludge of grounds clinging to the bottom. Her eyes stayed down, the decorative collar about her slender neck crusted with jewels and a transceiver circuit for conveying a painful voltage should she disobey.

"Thank you," the young Jedi said, accepting his serving with a pang of repressed anger. There were slaves in every _corner_ of this dwelling… but this one was barely older than Zhoa Pleromata, her body bearing only the first traces of budding womanhood. His hand closed impulsively about her wrist – but the poor creature shied from his touch, misunderstanding the gesture.

His mouth thinned yet further as she moved hastily away upon her errand. _ I am not here to free slaves._

But surely _someone _ ought to be here to do just that?

_You cannot save everyone._

And yet, _ every life is part of the universal Life, and worthy of our compassion, no matter how pathetic or seemingly humble. All things are interconnected in the Force._ He was not the pupil of Qui-GOn Jin for nothing; some lessons remained branded deeply on the soul, never to be expunged.

The Order served the Republic, while the Republic looked steadfastly the other way.

Once again, that distant thunder in the Force, a tectonic shifting of realities. _Tipping, tipping,_ tipping - - premonition, or the Unifying vision, spilled over into physical vertigo. He blinked away momentary dizziness.

Something was happening, here, on Tatooine, whether he wanted it or not, whether the Republic and the Order _acted_ or not, whether all the galaxy knew it or not. And he was caught, somehow, within the pincer of Fate, pinned helplessly at the nexus of some event he comprehended not in the least.

_Force,_he needed to _think_ – but at the moment, he was having an audience with a bloated sack of avaricious narcissism.

"Ah…. Esteemed Jedi ambassador: the Magnanimous Jabba inquires whether you spent a pleasant night, and hopes that this fair morning finds you hale and hearty."

Obi-Wan wrenched his attention back to the present moment, and fixed the protocol unit with a bland stare. _Really._ Behind the robotic interpreter, the Hutt sprawled squalidly upon his 'throne' – slatted eyes gleaming with displeasure and surprise, and fat purple tongue just tracing the ragged outline of his mouth. A dribble of viscous slime trailed down his four chins.

The young Knight stepped forward and made a very courtly bow. "Please thank His Eminence for the lavish accommodations, and express my gratitude for the entertainment so thoughtfully provided me."

He extended one arm from beneath the duster's obscuring folds, allowing the severed assassin droid's head to clatter out over the grille at his boots.

The company gasped and murmured. Jabba roared in astonishment, then spat out a long string of Huttese at his quavering droid.

The flustered translator wrung its metallic hands. "Oh, ah, the Supremely Benificent Jabba is most gratified by your compliments, and hopes you will stay as his guest at this morning's business meeting."

Obi-Wan's brows twitched upward, ironically. "He is too kind."


	9. Chapter 9

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 9**

The Jawas' sacred place was a network of caves hewn into the living bedrock of the desert, a series of vestibules and echoing cathedral caverns winding deep into the foundations of the endless sand basin. Crude petroglyphs adorned the rough walls: ochre, blood-red, pallid chalk figures depicting creatures no longer seen upon the wastes, perhaps memories of some ancient time, perhaps mere figments of the forgotten artist's mind. The solemn procession of hooded pilgrims burrowed further and further into the catacombs, Torbb Bakk'ile bringing up the rear at a cramping stoop. Most the passages' ceilings would not admit an average man to walk upright, much less a giantess. Black topknot swishing over one bent shoulder, sable-clad shoulders brushing the walls to either side, she made her painstaking way to the site of her putative godchild's naming ceremony.

And when she arrived, she gasped.

For here, at the bottommost cellar of the planet, unknown to any but these intrepid gnomes and their ancestors, lay a shallow pool of…._ Water._ Admittedly, a grimy, mineral-laden puddle, so briny that the air held a peculiar ocean tang, so opaque in the dim light of their glowrods that it appeared an oil slick – but on Tatooine even this pathetic drizzle of moisture was a living treasure trove, a wealth beyond reckoning. Phosphorescent reflections shimmered upon the pool's unruffled surface. Stalactites yearned downward from the cave roof, lolling tongues seeking to slake the world's eternal thirst at this holy fountain.

The Jawas broke into animated chatter, bustled about, prodded and chivvied her to the very edge of this impossibility, where she knelt down, trailing the fingers of one hand through the priceless elixir, the cool edge of this miniature sea. To this underworld, to this final resting place, must every drop of unevaporated water eventually run – or perhaps this was the dregs of a world-wide ocean, the last drops of Tatooine's primordial inheritance of life. The Jawas clearly held the place sacrosanct, for all of them dipped fingers in the pool and made a ritual gesture over face and heart. Their chanting lulled into a drone, and then into a comfortable recitation; soon enough, the miniscule babe in its swaddling was thrust back into the tall Jedi's arms.

"Cho nama wah dunki obasa," the eldest crone commanded, folding both petite hands in expectation.

The Force _pooled_ here, swirling lazily above the water, between the symbolic oceans and sky-dome of the painted roof. A name, a name for this kitling-sized infant, latest scion of the universal Life, tiny act of rebellion against the desert's annihilating emptiness, delicate and precious. To give a name was to give a destiny; the girl's fate hung in her hands, upon her whim.

Torbb's broad features relaxed into certitude as the answer was borne to her, upon an invisible current. Delicate, yet to be _cherished._ "She is called _Drosia."_ The crones murmured, rustled and shifted about. "…Morning dew."

Another murmuring, this one of comprehension, of approval; the child was lifted from her arms and presented back to her mother, now surrounded by the village matrons; the convocation began to disperse, make preparations to leave.

Until one of the younger members emerged from a wide side passage in high dudgeon, a long and expressive squeal of indignation drowning out her sisters' congratulatory gossip. Black robes askew, gloved hands pointing frantically at the chamber just beyond, the young Jawa quickly had the tribe crowding into the second cave, exclamations of astonishment and dismay resounding off the low roof.

For here, stowed in neat piles against three uneven walls, were the crates and palettes of a considerable, and wholly alien, trove – an improvised bank vault's contents safely tucked away, far from prying eyes and the unforgiving elements.

Torbb squeezed through the crowd and touched the nearest plastoid packing box, dark brows contracting and mouth tightening into a grim smile. "Well, well, well, Uticus," she muttered.

They had stumbled upon a pirate's booty.

* * *

The protocol droid practically stumbled over its own words in an attempt to maintain a façade of normalcy. "May I present to His Divine Magnitude, the Revered Jabba, his first visitor: Uticus of the –"

"Bocheega noto!" the massive Hutt bellowed, impatiently summoning his guest forward.

From the shadows obscuring the throne room's periphery stepped a figure taller and broader than any other present: a human man in his middle years, easily a full two meters in height, with boldly tattooed skin, a shining pate topped by a luxuriant knot of silken black and silver, and two extravagant mustaches which fell to mid-chest. He was clad in tall boots, close fitting trousers, an open vest of some exotic leather, and a bristling array of weapons which clearly served as both ornament and marks of rank. When he spoke, his voice threatened to knock dust from the rotting B'Omarri rafters overhead.

"jabba," this individual boomed, spreading both hands wide in a gesture of brotherhood but omitting any obsequious groveling or bow. "A pleasure to once again enjoy your hospitality."

The Hutt's eyes narrowed slightly, while the translator stuttered out a polite and meaningless reply.

The infamous pirate tilted his head back and surveyed the company, piercing gaze flitting over – then swiftly returning- to the cloaked stranger in one corner. "I see we have… ambassadorial … colleagues present this morning," he remarked, the hint of a growl in his tone.

Jabba squelched where he sat, rearranging his weight to better personal satisfaction. "Da to maka Jeedai nowasa," he grunted, waving a dismissive hand.

But Uticus was not so easily assured. He swiveled, singling out the unwanted witness with a pointing finger. "You, sir… I presume you have words to exchange with me. Out with it, then. I'm a busy man, and eager to get on with my _important_ trade arrangements."

Obi-Wan lowered his cowl and shouldered past the nearest gaping spectators . "Far be it from me to stand between a man and his ill-gotten gain…. However, I'm afraid the Republic has business with you which supercedes your participation in the black market auction here."

His interlocutor raised two bushy black brows, and snorted audibly. "Last I checked, Republic jurisdiction does not extend into the Rims." He cast a sympathetic glance round at Jabba's minions and sycophants, garnering a smatter of smirks and winks.

The young Knight folded hands into opposite sleeves. "Yes, well," he blandly retorted, "Sadly, you are wanted on six _Republic_ controlled systems for murder, extortion, and theft – not to mention various and sundry violations of the Interstellar Trade and Transit regulations. "

Uticus bristled slightly, and emitted a dry laugh. "Glib little bureaucrat, aren't you? There's a reason I prefer straight-dealing business partners."

This earned him a tight smile. "Let me put it to you _straight,_ then," the Jedi replied. "I am here to demand your unconditional surrender. You are hereby under arrest for numerous and heinous crimes committed within Republic borders. Cooperate or I will be compelled to take extreme measures."

Both Jabba's retinue and the accused pirate burst into contemptuous laughter.

"Really," the enormous bandit wheezed, still chuckling, "You and whose army?"

The Hutt overlord himself found this highly amusing. He slapped pudgy hands against his mountainous girth and guffawed in delight. "Choowaga bunkee," he grunted.

His protocol unit hastened to clarify. "The Surpassingly Forbearing Jabba bids you a pleasant afternoon and hopes your journey back to the Core is speedy and comfortable."

Obi-Wan executed a sweeping and facetious bow, and took his leave without further comment.

"Perhaps another time and place, eh?" Uticus called after him. "When you aren't hopelessly outnumbered? I'd like to_ see_ what passes for 'extreme measures' by Jedi standards."

Obi-Wan halted upon the arched threshold, turning one last time to address the towering pirate directly. "Consider yourself duly warned," he said, quietly.

The jeers and mockery of Jabba's retainers echoed after him all the way to the front gate.

* * *

The door chime rang – a little off key, like it always did, even though Anakin had tried to fix it like a bazillion times – and then more or less rattled off its fixture as the door itself was thrust unceremoniously open.

"Hey!" the underage shopkeeper hollered at the newcomer. "Watch it!" he hurried round from a pile of fan blades he was cleaning – you had to keep your filters clear or sand got _everywhere_ in no time flat – only to come up short at the sight of a hulking Gamorrean and his two Klatooinian comrades standing in the cluttered entryway. "Uh…. Can I help you?"

The snout-faced leader of this threatening trio wrinkled his prodigious nose and demanded Watto's whereabouts.

"Uh…." Anakin wasn't _stupid,_ and he knew an enforcer when he saw one. He scuttled round to the other side of the counter, even though it wasn't much protection, and licked his lips. Watto was almost certainly out at the cantina getting _choobazzi_ plastered, like he did nowadays quite a lot, but he wasn't about to tell these guys that. "He went on an errand."

"When's he coming back?" one of the scar-faced Klatooinians rumbled.

"I dunno."

A pile of spare parts went crashing to the floor, bits and pieces rolling beneath shelves and storage units. The Gamorrean snickered. "Try to remember."

There was only one group of people in Mos Espa for whom Jabba's enforcers might feel a modicum of respect – and that would be the loan sharks and bookies who would be in town for the big event day after tomorrow. Shmi always said that there was a kind of honor among thieves, or at least professional courtesy, enough to ensure that one set of crooks wouldn't directly step on the toes of another. "Um… I guess he went to make a bet on the races," he improvised, with a regretful shrug.

The henchmen exchanged an aggrieved look. The other Klatooinian – this one heavyset, dour-faced, with jagged protrusions decorating his skull – leaned far over the counter, yellow eyes glinting. "Pass on a message to your boss," he rasped, displaying ill-kempt teeth . "He owes Jabba a lot of moolasa. We're gonna give him a break, on account of it's almost Boonta… but if he don't; pay up _right_ _after_ the races, we'll be back. And we'll liquidate all his stock."

Anakin thrust his lower lip out and held the scoundrel's stare without blinking . Stupid wermo, he wasn't scared.

"_All_ his stock," the Klatooinian repeated, licking his lips. His eyes widened, meaningfully. "Make sure you tell him."

Yeah, right, sleemo. Anakin squinted and held his ground, but the threesome merely laughed at him and bumbled their way out the door, making sure to knock over a few more displays on the way out.

Only when they had departed did he allow the implications of the threat to sink in. Slaves were _stock._ He was stock. Shmi was stock. And he had a fairly good idea what _liquidate_ meant. His pulse ratcheted up a notch, a burning river starting to run molten in his veins. _Nobody_ was gonna hurt his mom, not because of some stupid debt that Watto owed because of his stupid gambling and stupid business deals. Nobody was going to _kill_ Shmi to teach Watto a badly deserved lesson. Anakin would kill _them _ first. He clenched his fists, wishing he had…. Something. A weapon. Skills. Bigger fists, even.

And then he remembered.

He had something better than all those – he had a _Jedi_ for a friend.

He closed the shop early, even though Watto would skin him alive if he found out, and rushed into the dusty byways to find Mister Qui-Gon. He would know what to do.

* * *

The slaughtered eopie carcasses roasted in the late-day sun, sending up incense trails of smoldering flesh, dried blood and spilled entrails. Carrion circled on high, mourning the dead, heralding the supremacy of _destruction._ The twin suns sank in obeisance upon the far hills, bowing before their lord, the rising night.

The Watcher looked impassively upon his handiwork, the sprawled limbs and severed heads, the artistic grotesquerie of his making. It was nothing but a child's bauble, a petty scrawl upon the blank tablet of this desert world… but it would stand as enticement and summons to other, greater, victims. The altar, strewn with firstblood, now called for greater and greater sacrifice, and the laws of the Dark dictated that such would come, in due measure and time.

He did not have to wait long. Even as the suns dipped below the distant sculptured horizon, the winged things on high fled, and the purpling dusk was cloven by a curdling cry – the krayt lizard's hunting call. Before the monster's sinuous form appeared above the last ridge, he felt it: hungry, malicious, powerful. Legendary. And drawn inexorably into this, the embrace of oblivion.

It would not be the first to die. Nor the last.

He smiled, and Waited.


	10. Chapter 10

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 10**

Cliegg stepped out of the sonics with a sigh of relief. It felt good to literally shake the dust and sweat of the day off his skin… with a rueful grimace at his pile of rumpled clothing, he wondered if the same could ever be said of his garments. He had a pair of comfortable old togs for 'round the house – not sturdy enough to wear outdoors, but possessed of a nice, elastic waistband and made of soft fiber worn thin by time. He'd bought them in the Core, more than a decade ago. The memory produced a small pang of nostalgia – but only a small one.

He made his way to the sunken farmhouse's kitchen, where Owen was busily chugging down a bottle of blue milk. "Da," he greeted his sire, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. "I'll fix us some dinner."

Cliegg sank into a creaking plastoid utility chair. "'Sallright, I had plenty this afternoon. You polish off those chonkers and we'll grind some new foo'm for the week." He leaned back heavily, glad to get the load off his aching knees and feet. The vaporators had needed a full tune-up, and he wasn't getting any younger.

Owen eyed him warily. "You were gone a long time yesterday," he said, rummaging in the conservator.

"Mm."

But the younger member of the Lars household was not so easily put off. "You, ah, ask that sleemo Watto about her yet, Da?"

_Her_ meant Shmi. How Owen had found out, Cliegg might never know. But the moisture farm community was a small one, and stars knew there was nothing to do out here but gossip about one's neighbors. "Nn," he responded, non-commitally. Owen didn't need to know about the wager. "Piece of chisszzk Toydarian won't let her go for less than a fortune."

_And she won't go without the boy being freed, too…. _ He sighed.

Owen plunked a plate of food in front of him, despite his voiced objections. "Cmon, Da, eat something. Day starts early tomorrow." A wan smile as the young man tucked into his own flavorless repast.

Cliegg munched stolidly at the nutritious bean paste. "Let's talk about you instead. How's things?"

A shrug, then a smile accompanied by a small blush. "New family over by the Meerscob ridge. Nice folks. Gotta daughter, 'bout my age."

Cliegg noted the carefully calibrated indifference of this statement. "Pretty?"

"Da!"

They ate, and drank, and ran the dishes through the pulse-cleaner.

"You're old enough to start thinking about the future," Cliegg resumed the previous discussion. "You have my permission. And when the time comes… if it comes…. we could always expand the house. Dig another wing in on the south side. Rock's solid."

Owen grinned. "Her name's Beru."

Cliegg nodded. "Mm. Well. I'd like to meet the lass sometime."

His son offered him a small smile and excused himself to check on the storage shed and the perimeter alarms. The early hours of night, when the heat of day was just dying off and most predators had yet to emerge from hiding, were a good time to walk and think. Cliegg leaned back in the creaking chair and did some thinking of his own. They _could _ expand the subterranean dwelling… maybe a bigger bedroom next to his own, turn that into a place for the boy. They could all fit, make it work.

He shook his head. That way madness lay – he had to keep his focus firmly in the here and now, the present and concrete and certain. What would be would be…. The Boonta Eve Classic would determine the course of his future, and the size of his house.

It was out of his hands now.

* * *

Qui-Gon Jinn listened to the boy's rant patiently, both thumbs hooked through his belt, one boot propped up on the low retaining wall outside the slave quarter.

"…And they'll _do_ it, too, Mister Qui-Gon sir! They mean it – they actually _like _killing people and stuff. You cross Jabba and you're _bugsquat._ Everybody knows that. "

"I am well aware that such mercenaries are not above punishing innocent victims for the transgressions of others," the Jedi master agreed, grimly. "You wish me to protect your mother; I give you my word that no harm will befall her at the hands of your new friends."

Anakin beamed. "Wizard! So you're gonna _blitz _ them! Can I come and see?"

The tall man frowned, reminding himself how _very_ harsh the world of slavery could be, how damaging to those enmeshed in its snare. "You think they would best be served by a swift death?"

His small interlocutor shrugged, a fierce scowl gracing his infantile features. "They've got it _coming," _ he insisted.

Qui-Gon sighed, turning to sink down upon the wall. "Here," he said, patting the hard-baked clay beside himself. "Let us talk about this for a moment. Suppose – for the sake of discussion," he amended, seeing the nova-bright gleam in the boy's blue eyes, "that I were to _blitz_ them , as you suggest."

"With your laser sword."

"With a weapon, or my bare hands," the tall man continued, placidly. "What good do you think that would accomplish?"

"It would _stop_ them from ever doing evil stuff again," his young friend promptly replied, nose wrinkling. "Obviously."

Qui-Gon nodded sagely. "Ah… but who is to say others would not replace them?... and others after that, hm?"

The boy thrust his chin out, stubbornly, kicking soft wrapped feet against the wall. "It would teach them a lesson, anyway," he insisted.

This evoked a wry smile, one laced with peculiar nostalgia. "I have another acquaintance – a student of mine, in fact – who once said something rather similar. He espoused the idea that evildoers ought to be _inspired_ to amend their ways. And he thought that a lightsaber would make the instrument of inspiration, par excellence."

Anakin grinned widely. "He sounds smart."

Qui-Gon's brows crept upward. "He is indeed. But we spent the better part of ten years correcting that fallacious line of reasoning. You cannot _make_ anyone 'be good' – particularly not by force of arms. A Jedi's mandate is not to punish wrongdoers, but to keep the peace. There is a significant difference."

The boy gazed up at him dubiously, mouth twisted to one side and blond hair falling in ragged strands over a furrowed forehead. "Okay," he said, with patent skepticism. "But I still wish you would blitz those guys."

"I will keep your mother safe," the tall man repeated, firmly. "Let that suffice."

"Fine," Anakin mumbled. "But I still think-"

Qui-Gon held up a hand. "And that is the problem. Now off you go – it's late, and surely you are missed."

Shmi's voice sang out over the evening quiet. "Ani! Ani… where are you? It's time for bed."

The boy hopped down from his perch and scampered away, pausing a few paces away to address the Jedi master again. "Thanks, Mister Qui-Gon."

The tall man's eyes narrowed. "And you are not to take the matter in your own hands, either," he warned.

Anakin's face stilled into stunned obstinacy. "…'Night," he said, tersely, before dashing off to obey his mother's summons.

The Jedi master leaned back, inhaling slowly, and considered the living enigma posed by Shmi's unique – and passionate – offspring. The Force _warped_ about this place and time, this strange meshing of realities, crossing of destinies. He had not been wrong to return here, to pursue the elusive _feeling_ Obi-Wan had reported…. But he had the distinct impression that he played with rarefied fire, a thing neither safe to handle, nor to leave alone.

Difficulties lay ahead, any way he looked at it.

* * *

The Wastelands were beautiful. From a certain point of view. At the moment, under starlight, they spread out from their rocky shores like a velvet sea, purple and indigo tides rolling ceaselessly against the encircling hills, visible only as a darker line against the sky's mantle. Through macrobinoculars, one could discern specks of life – creatures great and small, wise and wonderful, creeping and slithering, burrowing and sneaking among the barren slopes of sand, the shifting worldscape in which they fought tenaciously for the right to exist. The Force remained resonant, tympanum-taut, fine as blown glass, a luminous film in which to scry out future and past, the tangled nexus of the present.

Though the night breeze was cool, an ambient warmth still radiated up from the desert, the mother-heat of the vast planet , the liquid dross of countless eons' torment beneath beating suns. Obi-Wan folded his cloak over the swoop's handlebars and let the sweat on his skin evaporate in the brisk wind. His vantage point, atop one of the rocky promontories overlooking the arid basin, was a place for unfettered speculation . And Torbb's tardiness in making the rendezvous left him with time to _think- _ to brood, or meditate, in turns.

The recent past gnawed at him, relentlessly. Feld Spruu, Zhoa, Garen: all three injured on his watch, perhaps due to his negligence. Their fates would remain unknown to him until he too returned to the Temple, there to face the Council's inevitable displeasure at his willful delay. The present task preoccupied him: Uticus had proved to be allied with the Hutts, and self-assured in his superiority of numbers, set in his defiance. It could not end well – and a deep instinct bade him wonder what secret underpinned Torbb's fascination with the pirate. He sensed a _personal_ interest. The future loomed darkly as it ever had, but with alarming proximity, as though hungry to consume the present and past, absorb them into its own obscure and mutable depths.

Flesh crawling, he dared to sink deeper into the Force's currents, to taste the ethereal winds on this forsaken world, to really _feel_ what lurked here in the desert – and there it was again, a shadow haunting his steps, a perverse mirror image following, always following…. the unmistakable signature of the Other, the Enemy. He surfaced abruptly from the half-trance, running a hand through unruly hair.

Paranoia was so uncivilized. This place was getting to him.

"Nice," Torbb Bakkile's slightly husky voice, on the baritone extreme of recognizably female, interrupted his musings. "You always stand around navel-gazing in the dark, Kenobi?"

A gentle smile. "Do you really want to know?"

"Ha. No, not really." The enormous Knight found a wind-smoothed slab of rock and sat, unabashedly massaging her buttocks. "Fierfek! Those gravbike seats are designed for skinny-arse runts. That's the last time I ride one of the damned things, by my oath. "

Obi-Wan raised an admonitory brow, to no effect.

"Find anything?" his blunt-mannered colleague demanded.

He gazed out over the shadowed vales below. "Your friend Uticus was at the Hutt's palace. We exchanged words… as you predicted, he proved uncooperative."

"Told you he wouldn't submit to arrest," Torbb snorted. "…It's not in him to surrender. We have to do this the ugly way."

Obi-Wan nodded. "You?"

"I," she replied, matter-of-factly, "Have located Uticus' secret cache, in a cave formation fifty klicks from here. Actually, the place is sacred to the Jawa people – they're none too happy at the invasion of privacy."

"They've stored their loot until the auction, to keep Jabba's grubby hands off it. He must only have contracted for a cut of profits… I wonder what they've got stockpiled for sale on the black market."

Torbb thrust a hand into a large belt pouch and withdrew a few small items. "I took some time to take inventory. Barves hadn't even left a sentry- too confident in the obscurity of their hiding place, I suppose. Looks like Uticus has been dealing in the usual narcotics, raw minerals, tech components, .. and this." She held up a labeled vial, a thin cylinder of fluid for insertion in a hypo-spray.

Obi-Wan peered at it intently, borrowing his comrade's glowrod to have a better look. "More drugs?" he wondered aloud. "But these are biomedical symbols… is it a cure for some pathogen? That might be valuable to the right buyer."

Torbb grimaced. "It's a vitals blocker. Instant suspension of all animate function – the perfect simalcrum of death. It's reversible, of course…. But you can see the usefulness for smuggling. Inject one of these and you could sneak past the best bio-sensor scanners on the market… straight through any security blockade, automated screening check, anything. "

The younger Knight turned the curious tube in his hand. "Or subdue a foe, I suppose. A bounty hunter might like some of this. Simple, elegant, effective." The fine print on one side arrested his attention. "_Arbor Industries._ I should have known."

But Torbb was less concerned with the chemical's point of origin than its present owner. "You keep it for a souvenir," she quipped. "The important point is this: we have our ambush location."

A fair proposal, with only one flaw. "We're still vastly outnumbered. His crew must be comprised of hundreds. He'll send a considerable detail to transport the gods from that cave to the auction site. And armed vehicles, probably blaster cannon. I suggest _sabotage_."

"Too risky," Torbb argued. "We have the element of surprise. I say we utilize it. And besides, I may have acquired some useful allies of my own along the way."

Obi-Wan glanced up, comprehension dawning. "The Jawas," he breathed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 11**

The krayt dragon's death cry was a burbling ululation, volcanic froth pouring from its slit throat, blackening sand and scale, steaming life pooling amid the claw-churned valleys of sand.

The Watcher flourished his blades, their twin red tongues disappearing into the hilts, leaving behind the acrid tang of ozone, of scorched air. He bared his teeth in a silent leer, watching the arrogant _beast,_ king of the desert, writhe and grovel at his feet, power brought low before Power, strength and majesty before _Hate._ When at last the sinuous body stilled, its final spasms shuddering into eternal rest, he turned and tramped away, taking up post upon his chosen promontory among the black hills. Soon , the carrion scavengers would come, the large and the small, the winged and those that marched billion-fold from their hives beneath the sand, to reduce the corpse to a pale architecture of bone and clinging sinew, another wind-smoothed sculpture to grace the desert's terraces. And in the morning, such commotion would attract others, the next worshipers at death's ravenous shrine.

He had but to wait. His own prey, his Chosen, drew nearer – was even now upon the wastes, stealthy and cautious, _aloof,_ impregnable. For now. His time was coming.

And – as he watched the first bold flesh-eaters crawl from concealment and pick at the fallen dragon's cadaver, under cover of utmost night – he felt another presence wandering the desert's empty halls. The Child. The prize demanded by his master, the single grain hidden in a mountain of living chaff. Oblivious, preoccupied, unwitting, the foolish babe _careened _ toward its destiny, toward the uprooting and reversal of its every certainty, a tiny coracle caught in the thundering whirlpool of fate, at the center of which howled bottomless Dark.

The Watcher rose and prowled along the sheltered ridge. It was, perhaps, time that he and this… child… become better acquainted.

* * *

At midnight, Qui-Gon Jinn bolted out of a light trance into utter, pulse-stopping certainty that _something was not right._

He had tucked himself beneath an eave just outside the slave quarter, a sentinel's post that allowed him to invisibly monitor the entire clay-baked compound. Not a soul had crept past his guard into the humble dwellings beyond – it would require a master Shadow to elude detection, to sneak past such a guardian without leaving the faintest ripple in the Force.

His hand went of its own accord to the commlink on his belt.

A moment later, a clearly aggrieved voice answered. "….For stars' sake, Qui-Gon."

Relief blotted out irritation. "Is all well?"

Obi-Wan snorted. "I don't know. _Is_ it?" his voice was husky, sleep-bleared. Grimacing, the Jedi master realized that the bond between them, never attenuated by the formal severance of apprenticeship, guaranteed that _something_ of his own mood must have bled across psychic barriers, stirring the younger man into similar unease.

"I don't know," he replied, truthfully.

"Well, that clears matters up," came the facetious retort.

"Where are you?"

"Torbb and I are aboard the shuttle."

Qui-Gon reached into the universal light, casting out an impalpable net over the whole quarter, the hundreds of lives sheltered beneath its domed roofs, the restless, the squalid, the desperate, the resigned, the peacefully asleep… and…

"The boy is missing," he realized, with a jolt of apprehension. _How_ had Anakin got past his guard? Was it even _possible_ for an untrained youngling to shield so effectively? What did that _mean?_

"The boy," Obi-Wan repeated, blankly.

Impatient, the tall man swept his awareness out further, trawling the immediate vicinity; Anakin was not hard to locate, in any milieu.. though if he could _disappear_ with such skill….

"You mean _Anakin?"_ his young counterpart groused, edgily. "Master –"

"He managed to leave without drawing my attention."

"How?" Obi-Wan demanded.

"I don't know."

"Well. You're a veritable font of illumination tonight."

"Listen to me. He's gone – probably into the desert. He's obsessed with this upcoming podrace, and may have a vehicle. You need to find him."

There followed a significant pause – no more than a heartbeat's silence, a mere indrawn breath that would register as _nothing _ to an outsider, but which screamed _throttled vexation_ to Qui-Gon's finely attuned senses. "Very well."

"Thank you." They could argue about it later; for now, the Force was howling with danger. They needed to locate the boy and get him to safety. "I'll search the township and surrounding area."

"If he's out here, we'll find him," Obi-Wan promised. "…and give him an earful._"_

* * *

Speed.

Sometimes, when life was coming at you fast – when Hutt crime syndicate enforcers were knocking at your door, when a death threat was hanging over your mother's head, when it looked like you might be separated from your family forever, when all your dreams and ambitions were ruthlessly circumscribed by the fact of _slavery- _ sometimes, the only way to face your problems was to outrun them. Anakin caught his tongue between his teeth and hunkered down lower behind his hack-job podracer's rattling viewsheild. Grit and dust whirled past him, a vortex of angry heat and noise kicked up behind the twin engines yoked to his flimsy chariot.

The pod was faster than fast – it was the Best Ever Built. It was a conveyance fit for a hero. Well, mostly. He would prefer it to have a better paint job. Gold and black, maybe, with chevrons and stripes and some kinda insignia worthy of a hero or a knight. As it was, the pod was welded together of various scraps and salvaged pieces, some of them from unlikely sources. But as an engineering project, it was without rival. He'd seen plenty of racers before, and he'd pored over all the manuals he could get his hands on. But beyond that, he just _knew_ this one was the acme of its genus, a thing so _light,_ so overendowed with thruster amplifiers, that it teetered on the knife's edge of impossibility. One change to its design and it would topple into failure. There was no improvement to be made because he had taken the machines essential _nature_ to its inherent limits, by an infinitesimal calculus of raw _speed._

This time he wasn't only going to outrun his problems, he was going to race them. And win. He would come out on top. Victorious. Free. A hero, a champion.

The pod hurtled along his chosen practice course, the timer counting off the microseconds as he took careening turns and hugged the sides of steep canyons. A test run in pitch darkness might be "dangerous" by some folks' standards, but it also ensured privacy. There was no way he was gonna let that sleemo Sebulba catch sight of what the competition had in store; the nefarious Dug was well known for sabotaging his primary competitors, often to fatal effect.

He had just run through a narrow rock formation affectionately termed Hell's Gauntlet, and was heading into the open wastes to test out the stabilizers at velocities over three hundred k, when he _felt _ it. Hairs rose at the back of his neck, despite the thick layer of sweat accumulating between his shirt collar and the back flap of his crash helmet. His stomach flipped over, and he slowed down a bit, coasting along a tall sand-drift and checking the primitive forward sensors.

A Tusken raiding party would be bad – not that he was worried. He was _way faster_ than any dumb speeder or bantha caravan – though a stray blaster bolt to his engines could be disastrous. If he disappeared out here in the desert, without Mom knowing where he was…. he swallowed. Maybe he shouldn't have left without telling anyone. He'd even managed to sneak past Mister Qui-Gon, which seemed like a pretty wizard thing to do, if you thought about it. A Jedi was _serious business. _ But if there was trouble out here…. It might be better to have one on his side.

The heat-readings showed a lot of life forms, but not Sand People. Just a _choobazzi_ lot of scavengers over the next big swell, like enough to eat a whole herd of dead banthas. That was kinda weird. It intrigued him, even more than the strange tingly feeling going up and down his spine. Something _important, _ something…. big…. was going on out here. He could tell, somehow.

Cutting the thrusters to quarter speed, he skimmed over the shadowed sand, creeping closer and closer to the object of his fascination.

And the one silently, eagerly, Watching him.

* * *

"Tell me again what I'm looking for," Torbb Bakk'ile's static-ridden voice crackled over the 'link.

"Youngling: human, male, blond, eight or nine years old, with a propensity for unauthorized nocturnal excursions. You'll know him if you spot him."

The gigantic Knight muttered something under her breath before replying. "Well, no sign of the little blighter on my end. You, Kenobi?"

"Not – wait a moment." Obi-Wan made a last adjustment to his macrobinoculars and zoomed in again on the northwestern quadrant. There, mysteriously erupting from the dunes, was a long rooster-tail of dust, the telltale signature of a repulsor vehicle passing at high velocity. "Stars' end," he griped. "Never mind. I've found him. I'll send you coordinates."

"Oh good, I was starting to worry that I might actually get some sleep tonight."

He cut the link, smirking a little at Torbb's sarcastic appraisal of the situation. Qui-Gon's latest pet project was, in the characteristic manner of all such pathetic life forms, causing a wide ripple effect of inconvenience. Some things never changed.

He slung one leg over his idling gravbike and revved down the sharp incline, toward the open desert floor below. The sooner they tidies up this particular mess, the better, in his humble opinion. Because, besides the predictable degree of annoyance caused by his former mentor's current adoptee, he had an inchoate sense of disaster looming ahead, of playing with volatile elements over an open fire.

In short, he had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

It was a krayt dragon carcass.

Already half-consumed, white bones protruding from flaccid scaly skin, tendon and ligament hanging from the buttresses of its skeleton, the thing appeared a long coil of decay, broken upon the barren waste. The stars peered at the grisly spectacle without pity; the night wind caressed the fluttering shreds of flesh like so many pennant flags. Over the whole wreckage swarmed an army of gnawing, tearing, munching scavengers, glutting themselves on this unprecedented bounty.

Anakin brought the pod to a standstill and hopped over the side.

"Rugged," he breathed, awe-stricken. He had never seen death on such a grandiose scale, the ruin of anything so tremendous. Its blood still clotted the air with an iron tang, with a sticky-sweet armoa, repulsive and tantalizing at once.

There was something…. glorioius…. about the demise of such a monster, the downfall of such primordial greed and power. There was hope. Even the desert's mightiest predator could fall; why not then Jabba, his minions, Sebulba, Watto, all of them? Slavery and poverty themselves might be overthrown, suffering and oppression of every kind annihilated – brought to ruination and end, left to rot upon lifeless, ever-shifting sand.

Perhaps _speed_ was not the only solution. Perhaps there was another way….

"Power," a deceptively soft voice said, directly behind him.

He pivoted on the spot, heart leaping against his breastbone. The scavengers scuttled and flapped away, abandoning the feast in a wild stampede. The wind itself ceased, holding its breath.

He looked up, up into an alarming face, one scrawled and painted, black upon red. A wreath of horns crowned the newcomer's head; his eyes glinted lantern yellow beneath furrowed brows. Black shadows wrapped themselves about him, a lord's mantle.

"Power," the stranger repeated, indicating the krayt with a nod of his head. "There is also the way of _power."_

"Who…who killed it?" Anakin asked, as though in a waking dream. He already knew the answer.

The painted stranger smiled, mirthlessly. "I did," he replied, simply.

Limbs rooted to the spot, mind all but numb with shock, Anakin watched the mesmerizing figure prowl slowly forward until they were but an arm's length apart. Beneath the heavy folds of his cloak, a silver weapon hilt glinted.

"Are.. are you a Jedi too?" the boy stammered out, his belly fluttering, his pulse drumming in both ears.

Revulsion ghosted over the krayt-slayer's features. "I am something _better. _ Something more courageous."

Stumbling backward a single step, the boy scowled. "Jedi are brave!"

"Not brave enough to _strike down_ their foes," the tattooed warrior sneered.

_A Jedi's mandate is not to punish evildoers but to keep the peace. There is a significant difference._

Anakin swallowed, unable to drag his gaze from the Zabrak's boldly patterned face, the sigils traced over his skin in blood red and night-black, the horns thrusting from his skull like accusing fingers. "Uh…."

"You have foes," the stranger observed, quietly. "I can teach you to _fell_ them. To _end_ them. Come with me… is that not why you came here tonight? To find your destiny?"

Anakin's lungs seemed to squeeze tight, constricting his breath, cutting him off from the cool wind. A pounding silence closed in round him, an awareness of his utter solitude, of the desert's emptiness, of the krayt's reeking corpse, its spilled and ravaged guts laid out upon the sand like so many cherished secrets, so many hidden ambitions and fears. He licked his dry lips and peered up into a pair of jaundiced eyes, lamps burning amid pools of jet black.

"I…. what about Mom?" he peeped out, reeling in uncertainty.

"Come with me," the Zabrak repeated, extending one gloved hand. It was not an invitation, but a command.

And then another voice cut across the deafening silence, carried clarion-pure down the echoing dunes. "Anakin!" it cried. "Anakin, _stop!"_


	12. Chapter 12

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 12**

The next instant, Anakin found himself seized round the waist and yanked off his feet, vision blurring into a whirl of swirling black cloak and smeared stars as he was hefted bodily onto a sleek-bodied swoop in front of the Zabrak stranger. Fear flooded his veins with acid, a tardy certainty of destruction; he kicked and screamed, and sank teeth into the thickly gloved hand clamped over his chin and cheeks, the fingers digging cruelly into his flesh.

And then they were screaming over the sand, wind flaying tears from his eyes, scourging his exposed face with a fine spray of grit as he struggled.

"_Be still," _ his captor hissed; an invisible vise seemed to clamp down upon him, crushing his every limb in a terrible grip, smothering and absolute. He squirmed, panted, felt panic spurt beneath his ribs. This _thing_ was more than mortal….. images of demons, monsters, vampires, creatures described by spacers and childhood fancy danced before his inner eye, fanning the flames of terror and resentment.

Another swoop's intakes could be heard howling just behind – the two tones blending then parting in continual discord, two endless shrieking cries carving a line of strife across the open desert floor. Anakin twisted, yearning to see their pursuer, his would-be rescuer, but the Zabrak's whipping cloak blocked his view, blurred the landscape into uniform shreds of grey and black. Behind his temples, a tidal thunder rose and swelled, more deafening than even the twin wails of the swoop turbines. And somehow, without understanding how, he knew this to be the clashing of titanic wills, one against the other, giants grappling in some invisible domain – clashing like electrical storm fronts over the Black Hills.

It made his head feel like it would explode.

And his _temper_ snapped next. Who did these _people_ think they were? How _dare_ his kidnapper abscond with him like so much stolen merchandise? He wasn't _goods,_ he was a person! And his name was Anakin! A scream of defiance tore loose from his throat, a desperate war-cry fierce enough to loosen the impalpable bands holding him in place. He _kicked, _ one foot catching the grav compansator a glancing blow – and the world flipped upside down as the bike, the stranger, and he himself were tossed willy-nilly into the sky.

He landed flat on his back, _really really really_ hard in the sand. All the breath left his body in a giant whoosh and he thought maybe he was bugsquat, smooshed flat and _messed up._ Before he could wonder whether he was dead, he saw the black swoop crash into a dune , sideways, kicking up a big old wave of sand like an explosion. And _then_ he saw the rider land _on his feet, _ just like that! –flipping down from midair into a crouch, his face drawn into a hideous scowl, teeth bared and barbed head silhouetted against the deep purple heavens.

Anakin rolled over –_it hurt! –_ and sucked in a shuddering gasp, eyes wide and jaw unhinged in shock. The second swoop swerved off to one side, in a tight spiral; its rider also launched himself into the air, turned over once, and landed on his feet, tossing a dark cloak to one side as he did so. The cloth landed in a rumpled heap to one side, while the man stood with feet apart and shoulders thrown back, starlight glinting faintly on pale garments.

It was _that guy! _ The one who had come to Tatooine before, Mister Qui-Gon's friend, the one who needed help fixing his ship and was pretty nice but hard to understand. He looked different. Wild. Elemental. Scary, even.

"He is _mine," _ the snarling Zabrak told his foe. They were circling now, counterclockwise, like boxers on the cusp of a fight. Anakin tried to scrabble upright, but his body wouldn't move. He knew what was going to happen; icy chill was cascading down his spine, a heady blend of fearful anticipation and raw, terrifying bloodlust. What would happen? Who would win? Would they kill him, too?

"I don't think so," the other one said. He looked _really_ young, Anakin thought. Not a match for the _thing_ circling round him with predatory intent stamped on every line of his garishly painted features, shining in hollow eyes.

They kept moving, slowly, slowly, until the Zabrak was opposite and the young guy closer to Anakin. His boots were just an arm's length away now. Squinting up, the boy could see the weapon in his hand – a laser sword, the one he'd been carrying when they'd first met. What a chupa booki! Only jedi used weapons like that, he couldn't possibly hope to stand up to the stranger with something he didn't really know how to –

The Zabrak flourished a pair of similar hilts; with a nerve-jolting snap and hiss, two brilliant crimson flames shot from their open ends, twin blades of blood red, pulsing hot and loud like the pulse of some primordial monster. Anakin clapped hands over his ears, scrunched up his face. Oh, he didn't want to see the other guy get _blitzed, _ not like this, not _burned and sizzled _into a nasty mess, not cut to pieces and –

He cried aloud when the _idiot_ ignited his own sword – blinding sapphire blue, humming one long sonorous note in the deathly still air. His posture loosened into a supple readiness, the blue 'saber swept _round and over, _ carving an elaborate knot in the darkness, leaving a subtle afterimage where it passed – epehemral, luminous wings spread bright, a corona of fleeting, hard-forged purity.

Anakin's jaw dropped, because in that instant he _knew._

"_You," _ the horned stranger growled, eyes _burning._

"You," his foe said, dead calm.

Their spectator clutched at the sand beneath him, pressing his body flat, instinctively aware that absolute stillness was his best chance of survival, that _this_ was a fight for _him,_ for his fate…. for his salvation or perdition, freedom or utter eternal enslavement.

They fell upon each other like two kraits vying for supremacy, might against might, skill against skill, one razored intent against its polar opposite. The combat unfurled like one of those dust-storms that roared in from the open wastes, a towering column of death spinning out into tattered pennants and gales, destructive arms sweeping out from the furnace of a tight center. Blue and red blades screamed and clashed, the sound of their meeting an awful shriek of distress, sparks cascading like hot rain where they hammered together, their songs dissonant and yet beautiful, a pounding chorus singing out forgotten truths, secrets, prophecy and sacred portent.

He watched, entranced, heart falling into rhythm with the wild dance of the paired warriors, the impossible speed and power of their battle opening before him like revelation, like first vision: speed, speed and power – these were but the vestments obscuring an invisible Source, the pulsating Heart of the universe. He looked, and he beheld it: Light and Dark, sempiternally locked in strife, in a lover's embrace, in unity, in absolute opposition. From that furnace-star the world was born and died, cycling perpetually, spilling over the rim of being without cease, trillion-fold reflection of the primordial, the Real, the one.

It blossomed within him, a seed hidden until this moment, and took root. He screamed, in pain or in joy he did not know. Light and Dark clashed before him, around him, cacophonous, silent. The Zabrak and his enemy panted, sweated, snarled; blood and sky clashed, screamed, burned and throbbed, blinding, dizzying, overwhelming. Anakin squeezed his eyes shut, but the conflict erupted within him now, filling him, penetrating him, sweeping him up in its obliterating embrace, hammering him between principalities, pulling him apart, _ripping _him in twain, eating him alive….

He screamed, and screamed, clawing at his own chest and hair. No, no no nonononooo… make it stop, make it go away, leave me alone, please please no –

He slatted open tear-blurred eyes and beheld the final strike. The young man, the _fool, _ducked a double decapitating blow, reversed, spun, and flicked his blade straight down across the Zabrak's torso, leaving a molten line of fire from collarbone to navel; the black-robed figure threw back his head and loosed an awful cry, rage and pain wedded together, explosive, poisonous – then threw out a hand, his agony a _wall_ smashing the world flat.

A body landed flat on top of Anakin, with a hard grunt. The desert rang with fury, with liquid fire.

There was scuffling, the sound of wheezing breath, a whine of approaching thrusters. He glanced up, around, disoriented. Somewhere, distance and location smashed into a kaleidoscope of scattered fragments, there was a third swoop and another rider. He saw the Zabrak curse, flick a wrist, bring his felled vehicle flying back to himself, mount it in a whirl of angry cloak and hissing pain. He saw the second swoop descending a steep dune at breakneck speed, too late to catch the fleeing warrior. Focusing closer, he saw a pair of blue eyes squinting into his face, a drop of perspiration trickling in slow motion along a loose strand of long auburn hair, the rumpled edge of cream tunics, clean thick-woven cloth, ootmian's garb, too finely crafted for a native.

"Anakin," the young man said. His voice was a little rough about the edges, like he couldn't breathe quite right. "Are you injured?"

He sat up, kind of. Another pair of hands helped him. "I'm okay, mostly," he said. His ribs hurt, and his head really hurt. And he was shaking now, feeling kinda sick. "You're…. you're actually a Jedi. Like a real one," he wheezed.

"Kenobi!" another voice rapped out. The sky was blotted out by another figure, broad shouldered, dark-clad. "What in stars' name was that thing?"

Kenobi. That was the guy's name. Obi-Wan. Anakin clutched at his middle and curled into a ball. He really didn't feel so good. "My podracer," he moaned. "It's over …. By the krayt…"

The next thing he knew, he was being lifted up again, but this time gently. "I've got him," the deep-voiced woman said. She was super huge, like a bantha or something, not a human. "We'll take him back to the shuttle for now. You all right?"

He could hear the young Jedi dusting off his clothes, which was kinda silly because sand got everywhere, no matter how tidy you tried to be. Then he laughed a sort of dry, not-funny laugh, which made Anakin frown. It wasn't a _joke._ They'd almost been killed back there… like _blitzed,_ not just regular killed.

"My podracer," he moaned, feeling really dizzy and tired.

"We'll retrieve your blasted racing contraption," Obi-Wan promised, still kinda sounding short of breath. "Stars forbid anything happen to your _machine. _ I'm sure your mother is worried sick about it."

It wasn't a nice thing to say, but the sarcastic reassurance sufficed to quell Anakin's rising panic. "Okay," he slurred. "Thanks."

"Quiet, young one," the gargantuan woman murmured. "You've had quite the misadventure tonight."

* * *

Twenty klicks out into the arid desert's sea, the Watcher dismounted and fell to his knees, reeling beneath the black Night. Hands scrabbled at each other, fumbling off the thick gloves. His tunics were singed, reeking of burnt fiber and charred flesh; he tore them apart, revealing his livid chest, where red and black sigils were scarred over by a molten line, a thin brand running like a carven canyon from clavicle to belly, a throbbing, pustulent wound like a lingering caress of fire, a tongue of agony snaking down his body.

He threw back his head and groaned aloud, _relishing_ the pain, the hate, the anger, the _vulnerability._ Dark eddied and pooled, lapping at him, burbling in delight. Pain was _strength, _ pain was anger and fury and _power._ His Chosen had gifted him this _first kiss,_ this graze of his blade, a pledge and token of their bond. His fingers pressed against the blackened, swollen edges of the Makashi strike-line, fanning the pain into spiking intensity. Hate pounded behind his temples, rose like bile in his throat, brimming over. He glutted himself on it, lips drawn back in ecstasy , eyes fluttering shut. It was but a _taste_ of the destruction ahead, but a flirtation, a coy _touch- _ and yet it was exquisite, intoxicating, addictive.

It made him _stonger,_ it made him _bolder._

He lusted in earnest now, where he had but yearned. He would return this delicate salute with another, with vengeance and pain, with ruinous seduction to hatred. He would _have_ his Chosen, own him and consume him. It was meant to be; he was meant to ascend, to _dominate_ the Light, to be crowned Darth and master.

He groaned, cherishing the smoldering embers of his wrath, of his longing, … and Waited.


	13. Chapter 13

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 13**

By midmorning the raceway hangar was bustling with preparations for the big event. Mechanics accompanied by the usual bevy of pit droids and gonk fuel-luggers teemed over the decks, shouting above the raised voices of bookies, vendors, suppliers, and eager lookie-loos seeking a glimpse of the various pods and their assigned jockeys. The rafters rang with mechanical hubbub and the raucous laughter of Mos Espa's already solidly plastered denizens. The traditional Huttese holiday began earlier and earlier each year, stretching into a kind of week-long festival of petty vice, as befit its founders.

Watto theToydarian meandered among the throng, casting a sidelong glance at the spectacle of Sebulba the Dug enjoying the sensuous ministrations of twin Twi"Lek masseuses. Sebulba was _rich,_ as a direct result of podracing acumen in many an Outer Rim venue , including the Boonta Classic and the Circus Morticus races on his homeworld of Malastare. Big corporate money backed many of the professional entrants, but the Dug funded himself – and enjoyed the resulting profits with shamelessly hedonistic flair. Watto had no love for the lecherous hand-walker, but he knew a solid wager when he saw one, and Sebulba was going to win tomorrow, as he always did.

The conspicios absentee from the proceedings was his own slave boy. The smart-mouthed _booki_ was nowhere to be seen… but what did that matter? So long as he showed up for work the day after the race, he was free to waste his time in whatever fashion he saw fit. The kid was good enough not to get himself killed – and it as perhaps for the better that his hacked-together pod was nowhere near Sebulba's tinkering feet. There was no official ban on sabotage in the rulebook, after all. And Anakin would be a difficult piece of property to replace.

With the junk shop closed , like every other business in the spaceport town, Watoo was free to wander and gossip like his numerous contemporaries. He had staked his entire fortune – his very existence, in point of fact – upon the outcome of this race. Little wonder it occupied his entire attention, hypnotized him as surely as a swaying serpent wooing some hapless rodent. He fluttered here and there, gazing over his wrinkled snout at the chaoriots and engines, the flags and paraphernalia, the fuel tanks and toolkits, the chattering, histrionic pit droids. The entire scene took on a luminal clarity—

And then warped into surreal, horrifying nightmare.

"You. Fathead," a hulking Gamorrean grunted wetly, just behind him.

Rotating slowly in mid-air, the unfortunate Toydarian forced himself to look at the trio of enforcers, emissaries of the local Hutt crimelord.

"Jabba wants his money," the Klatooinian on the left reminded him. "In full."

Watto spread placating hands. "Tell Jabba I can pay him. I don't want any trouble."

"Give us the money, then," third brute demanded, taking a threatening step forward.

Hovering backwards, the junk dealer looked for a swift exit route. "Look," he wheedled. "I don't have it _with me….._after the race, eh? We'll square the account up."

"You better," the Gamorrean snorted. "Or we seize your assets and make an example out of _you."_

In the local Huttese idiom, 'example" translated roughly as 'mutilated corpse.' Watto bobbed up and down, nervously. "After the race," he repeated, wishing his voice didn't quaver so noticeably. "E'chuta!"

The thugs laughed at his bravado. "E'chuta cabo," they replied, making the requisite obscene hand gesture, and slunk off to bully the next victim on their calling list.

The pot-bellied little Toydarian shoved hands into the pockets of his vest and flapped disconsolately away, muttering empty imprecations under his breath.

* * *

Obi-Wan leaned against the shuttle passenger compartment's interior bulkhead and watched the boy sleep.

He was unsettled; a few snatched hours' rest, a deep meditation , and a careful assessment of his bruises and abrasions had made that much clear to him. The Other's presence here, upon this unlikely backworld, was deeply disturbing. And more disturbing still, the creature's interest in this _slave boy._

He ran one hand through his unbound hair. Qui-Gon might be right.

Blast it.

The child snored, for stars' sake. How could anyone so inexplicably _important_ snore like a suckling akk puppy? A tiny thread of drool was even now forming a sticky rivulet from the boy's open mouth onto the thin fibrofill pillow. He made a mental note to chuck the thing into the 'cycler at next opportunity. And yet, scrawny, pug-nosed, muss-haired and foolish as this child was…. he was also somehow _coveted. _ By a _Sith._

Torbb appeared behind him, emerging from the cockpit. "All clear?"

He snorted, gently. "Qui-Gon's coming to take him back to town…. He has a mother there. And an _owner."_

The giant Knight ducked beneath the doorway. "Seems a pity to return him," she agreed. "Under the circumstances." Her thick black brows rose. "Especially recent ones. That thing you fought…"

"That," he replied, heavily, "Is a Sith. I'm sure of it. I've told the Council… they, too, are concerned."

Torbb favored him with a roundly skeptical look. "There are lots of vile things in the galaxy, Kenobi. They needn't all be members of … a dead cult. She hesitated, scowling. "Though… I felt it, too."

He nodded, releasing a slow breath. The tattooed warrior had left a miasma behind, a lingering taint in the Force, pungent and repugnant. Just as it had before, the trace signature left him feeling… queasy. Allergic, almost. He smoothed back his thick fall of hair again.

"Cut that damn mop off," Torbb bluntly advised. "I'll do it for you, if you want."

He made a face, swiftly changing topics. "Are we agreed upon our plan for tomorrow?"

His fierce comrade 's features hardened. "Yes. I need to go now, if I'm to meet the nomads in time. "

Obi-Wan dipped his head. "Of course. I'll stay here and wait for Qui-Gon, then join you at the first rendezvous. May the Force be with you."

Torbb clapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him into the bulkhead. "I am grateful for your help, brother."

He smiled, faintly. His pledge would prove costly when he faced the Council back on Coruscant; but Torbb's unexpected friendship had proved a thing of unique value and timbre, one he would honor. Her heavy footfalls crossed the deck into the miniscule cargo hold, and then tramped down the access ramp, left open to encourage air circulation; even the stand-by air cycler was hard-pressed to counteract Tatooine's stifling heat.

* * *

Anakin woke not long after. "Aw, man!" he complained, groggily. "I'm _really_ hungry."

Obi-Wan curtly popped the self-heating seal on a container of shipboard rations – mandrangea bean hash, always the last thing left in a standard "assorted" requisition pack – and shoved the unappetizing offering beneath his guest's upturned nose. The boy tucked in without any hesitation, manifestly pleased with his humble fare.

"Mm," he enthused. "Thanks a lot, Mister…. "

"Obi-Wan," he supplied, grimacing as he unsealed a second meal pack. Waste not, want not.

Anakin wolfed his second helping down at a pace more suited to podracing than polite dining, and then abruptly looked up, acute distress shining in sky-blue eyes. "Mom!" he exclaimed. "I'll bet she's just _mechanga_ with worry – she didn't know I went out and – "

"Your mother has been informed that you are safe," the young Jedi assured him, gingerly taking up position at the far end of the inset ship's bunk. Anakin drew his legs up crosswise and stared at him, curious.

"So…. Uh… do you know that guy? The weird one from last night, I mean?"

He knew far more of 'that guy' than he ever wished to. "We've met," he replied, laconically.

The boy curled up into a protective ball. "He's creepy."

Understatement of the millennium. "You might say that."

Anakin scrunched his nose and slatted fair eyes, suspiciously. "So how come you didn't tell me you're a Jedi before? I mean, when we first met?"

Ah, yes. He shrugged, noncommittally. "It wasn't important."

But the child was far too perspicacious for his own good. "I think you were up to something sneaky and didn't want anyone to know. I bet Jedi have lots of enemies and stuff. And you have to be careful."

Obi-Wan's brows rose. "As opposed to people who take midnight joyrides in the desert, solo and unarmed."

Anakin brushed this aside. "I was practicing for the big race tomorrow. I'm gonna win, and be the only human podrace champion _ever."_

"A laudable life's ambition."

There was a short pause, as the child struggled to discern his meaning. "Hey… do you not like podracing, or something?"

It wasn't his place, nor his responsibility, and yet…. The young Knight crossed his arms. "Anakin," he said, gravely. "Have you ever considered that the purpose of your existence may encompass something far more …important… than winning an uncouth sporting competition?"

"Oh sure," the boy shrugged. "I'm gonna be famous and rich and powerful and I'm gonna free _all_ the slaves in the galaxy and lots of other stuff too. You'll see. I'm gonna help people. Mom says the worst problem in this universe is that nobody _helps_ anyone else. I'm gonna change that."

"You plan to alter the very fabric of sentient nature?"

"Somebody has to make people be good," Anakin insisted, fiercely. "Even if Mister Qui-Gon says you can only protect the innocent. At least, Jedi can't do more than that. But I don't want to be a Jedi anyway. I'm _not _going to any old dumb school."

Obi-Wan's jaw dropped, momentarily. What in Force's name had his former mentor been _discussing_ with this peculiar child genius? Had the man lost his _mind?_ "Mister Qui-Gon," he dryly responded, "Says a great _many_ things."

"Yeah, I know," the boy earnestly agreed. "He's wizard! Hey! I just figured something out, I think… did he teach you how to be a Jedi? Like, is he your teacher?"

Oh for stars' sake…. "Yes."

Anakin goggled. "That's' totally rugged! So you know him really well and you're like really good friends and everything! How long have you been a Jedi?"

"My whole life. Well, nearly. As long as I can remember."

HIS small companion frowned over that. "What about your Mom?"

"She approved the idea." He wasn't venturing any further down this perilous road. Time to parry and reverse. "Why does it concern you?"

"Just wondering," came the petulant response. "That other lady.. the giant one… is she a Jedi too?"

"Yes; Knight Bakk'ile is a very devoted Jedi."

Anakin nodded, and scratched his nose, contemplatively. "How 'bout that weird guy with the red laser swords? He said he was something _better_than a Jedi. More powerful. Braver."

Obi-Wan bristled, invisibly. "What do you think?" He watched his new acquaintance closely.

"I dunno." A sly, sidelong glance, thoughts blotted out by impermeable reflexive shields. The boy was… remarkably talented. "I guess… I thought you were maybe a little scared of him. I could feel it. I still can." Those alarming eyes came up again, meeting his astonished gaze squarely.

Ah.

"It's true," Anakin pressed.

He clenched his jaw. _So strange._ So …impossible. "I…. am wary of him," he explained, choosing words painstakingly, "Not because he is more powerful, or more courageous, or more cunning, but because he is a …. Tempter. He could ensnare me in his own hatred, into the Dark."

"So… he could kill you?"

Not the point. "Perhaps. That wouldn't matter. I'm speaking of something far, far worse. He could make me into something like him. If I let him. If I fell for the trick."

Now the boy was thoroughly stymied. "Like if you went with him? He tried to get me to come with him."

"Yes, I saw…. I suppose so. He is not powerful or brave, as he boasts. He is above all else a Liar. But for that very reason he is dangerous above all else."

It proved too much to digest. Anakin yawned hugely, and rubbed his eyes. "I want to go home," he lamented. "I need my Mom."

Obi-Wan stood, unaccountably relieved that the interview was at an end. "Rest here. We'll get you home soon." He slipped into the cargo bay and then halfway down the ramp, squinting out over the mirage-textured sands, peering into the wavering distance at the ragged hills. A faint vertigo encroached upon his senses, as though he were already teetering over the edge of a cataract, in spiritual freefall over some invisible cliffside.

The desert heat warped around him, battered at his skin. He pulled at his damp tunic collars with one hand, taking deep breaths and keeping his eyes on the far horizon. Force…. What was _happening_ here? The Sith seemed to know, or at least to guess; why then could he not pierce beyond the veil, _see_ the shifting of balance, the tectonic slide beneath the surface of this forsaken world? Was he being deliberately obtuse?

Was there something he didn't _want_ to see? A willful blind spot?

The heat danced over the sands, sinuous and elegant, writhing bands of color swirling above the superheated dune slopes. The sky burned white blue, an inverted brazier in which the twin suns flamed mercilessly, yellow eyes like the eyes of the Sith warrior. And the Force continued to _reel,_ the axis unsteady, the center unstable, a sea of churning light and shadow, past and future blended into a tumultuous now without anchor or polestar. His head _throbbed_ with it.

He cursed, and leaned over the hydraulic strut to emphatically retch out his guts.

After which, he felt marginally better – not least of all because Qui-Gon's unmistakable presence made itself felt just over the nearest ridge.

"About time," he grumbled, with an inexplicable spurt of relief.


	14. Chapter 14

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 14**

Qui-Gon left the borrowed eopie in the scant shade afforded by the shuttle's hull and made his way round to the boarding ramp, eager enough despite his Jedi stoicism to attain the cool refuge of its interior. Unfortunately, he found his way deliberately blocked by an ashen-faced and peevish former padawan.

"Obi-Wan."

The younger man smiled tautly, eyes flashing. He looked peaked, his presence fever bright. "Master."

The tall man raised his brows. "You've let yourself get heatsick; you should know better by now."

He was rewarded with that singularly _insufferable_ look, the bland ironic one that had ruffled his calm since the beginning of their acquaintance. "We need to _talk,"_ Obi-Wan said, feet planted shoulder's width apart, subtly forbidding further egress.

The sun was _beating_ down the Jedi master's back. It had been a long ride. "Perhaps somewhere cooler," he pointedly suggested.

"Perhaps somewhere _private,"_ his young friend retorted.

Shifting impatiently to avoid having his soles scorched straight through, Qui-Gon released his pique on a steady exhalation. His tunics were soaked front and back with perspiration, his hair heavy with gritty moisture. He was _not_ having this discussion on the star-forsaken boarding ramp. "If this concerns the boy –"

Obi-Wan's features hardened. "Did you _actually_ discuss the possibility of training with him? Of taking him to the Temple?"

The elder man lifted his chin. Enough. "I may exercise certain prerogatives, as a _Master_ of this Order," he reminded his obstinate comrade. "I assume you respect my right to do so."

A muscle in Obi-Wan's jaw twitched. He stepped aside, silently simmering at the curt reminder of rank and authority.

It was blessedly cool inside the ship; Qui-Gon tapped the regulator controls, and stripped off his tabards and outer tunic. "Thank the Force," he muttered.

"Mister Qui-Gon sir?" a puerile voice called out from the next compartment.

He ducked through the partition before Obi-Wan could further importune him. "Anakin. I am glad to see you are well."

The boy had the good grace to make a show of contrition. "I'm sorry about last night…. I just needed to test out my racer, and – "

"You made a foolish and dangerous decision," the tall Jedi cut him off. "One which caused your mother much grief. I expect that you will not do such a thing again."

Anakin scuffed the decks with one toe. "Sorry," he repeated. "Can I go home now?"

"In a moment… perhaps you could do us a service first."

Blue eyes flitted upwards, eager to make amends for his transgression.

"Here, in the cockpit. The magnetic compass needs recalibrating… would you lend your expertise to the problem?"

"Sure!" Anakin piped, springing through the forward hatch like a frisky nerf calf.

"Thank you," Qui-Gon gravely replied, sealing the door panel between them. He turned to his disgruntled companion. "Very well; we have privacy. Speak your mind."

Obi-Wan pressed his back against the closed panel. "He told me he has no intention of attending any – and I quote – _dumb Jedi school._ One wonders how such an outlandish notion occurred to him in the first place."

"The mind of a child is a wonderful thing."

"Don't quote Master Yoda at me! We _cannot_ recruit him as an initiate. The idea is…. absurd." The younger Jedi cut the air with one hand, lending sardonic emphasis.

The tall man exhaled slowly, outwardly calm. "Why?"

"Why?" An exasperated sideways glance. "Qui-Gon. He's far too old. He's a _slave,_ on a system outside Republic jurisdiction. And he's…. "

"What?"

Obi-Wan lowered his voice to an intent whisper. "The boy is _dangerous._ I sense it; the Council will sense it also. Why can't you?"

The Force tautened another notch, binding them in a heated opposition apparent in neither bearing nor intonation. "It is _possible,_ my young friend, that my experience greatly exceeds your own; and that your prediction of the Council's judgment borders on _presumption."_

The young Knight fell silent, the furrow between his brows a sharp exclamation mark of displeasure at the reprimand. "Forgive my _arrogance_," he said, barely penitent.

Qui-Gon reached out to touch his friend's shoulder, though no answering warmth presently suffused the Force. "External circumstances can be _managed_; justifiable exceptions can be made to any guideline; and as for danger… since when does that deter _you,_ Obi-Wan?"

He received no reply; but the utter stillness of his comrade's expression assured him that the strike had sunk deep, and true to its mark. He leaned in. "If a _Sith_ is here, and if a _Sith_ wants the boy, then the danger of _leaving_ him is much greater than any other, whoever and whatever else he might be."

They stood silent for a long moment, the dispute brought to an instant stalemate.

Until the cockpit hatch slid open again to reveal a round and triumphant face. "Got it!" their exuberant underage technician proclaimed, cockily. "Piece of cake."

* * *

Cliegg Lars opened his front door to the collective presence of his nearest neighbors – a score of weather-beaten men, clad in faded garments, armed with rifles and handheld blasters. He nodded once, understanding without explanation the meaning of this convocation – in times of trouble the moisture farming community banded together. They seldom otherwise crossed paths, nor communicated save in town; the arrival of a veritable posse upon his doorstep meant only one thing.

"Come in," he grunted, issuing them all into the farmhouse's central courtyard, open to the evening sky above. Neon hues glowed in the sky's arched roof: lurid yellows and pinks, deepest violet. Clouds of inert gases mocked the water-starved dwellers below. No rain would fall from these tattered banners, no benison from the planet's skinflint heavens. He offered his guests water; all had the good manners to refuse such munificence.

"What is it?" Cliegg grunted, settling at his table with creaking joints. A few of the men joined him; others stood darkly around the perimeter of this makeshift council.

"A dead beast, out over the westward dunes, under the Black Hills," Corrk informed him, voice reduced to a wheezing rasp by two decades' remorseless bacci-smoking. "Krayt, actually. Huge one. It's attracted more scavnegers'n you can shake a stick at. "

Bad news indeed. That many beasts vying for a share of the kill was a recipe for disaster. Territorial disputes, pecking order, survival of the fittest would all insure that many hopeful predators would slink away hungry, rejected by their competitors... and that bode ill for families and domestic animals. The carcass was a beacon flare summoning every toothed and clawed form of trouble for hundreds of klicks around.

Cliegg sighed.

"We're thinking to go over that way at dawn," Corkk continued. "Pick off a few of the biggest feeders, burn the rest the corpse. It's the only way." Thiers was a life of brutal pragmatism. "You in?"

A shake of the head. "I'm due in town for the races," Cliegg protested.

"I'll go," Owen volunteered. "Don't look at me like that Da! It's not Tuskens, or anything. Just a bunch of womprats and such. And a dead krayt."

The boy had a point, and basic decency demanded that the household contribute at least one member to the cooperative endeavor. "All right," Lars agreed, reluctantly. "But be careful. Take my new rifle with you."

"I will, Da."

"Pack your bag," Corkk instructed. "We'll camp at my 'stead and head out at first-rising. The sooner we clear up this mess the better."

* * *

Anakin happily contemplated the grav-bike's engine compartment, toolkit haphazardly spilled upon an oilcloth at his feet upon the sand. "This'll just take a sec, Mister Qui-Gon sir!" he called over one shoulder, then plunged into the fray, thrusting both arms in to the knotted mess of the machine's bowels like an intrepid veterinarian plying his trade.

Obi-Wan looked away. The sight was slightly…. nauseating.

Beside him, Qui-Gon chuckled softly. "I do believe you still occasionally let your imagination run away with you."

They backed up a pace, into the hull's shelter. Evening shadows clawed across the dunes, stained the jagged foothills indigo.

"At least I don't literally run away," the younger Jedi muttered. "And I'm not sure quite _how_ I ended up with the eopie end of this deal."

His companion spared a smug smile. "Seniority."

Obi-Wan snorted against the interior insulating panel with tightly folded arms. "You've been invoking that clause rather _frequently_ of late," he grumbled.

The tall Jedi scrutinized his friend carefully, gently probing with the Force. To his surprise, the solicitous invasion of privacy was not rebuffed. An amorphous dread lurked at the edges of Obi-Wan's psyche, a thing prowling for admittance but kept at bay by adamantine will. "You're on edge," he gently prompted.

Blue eyes flitted sideways, evading direct inquisition. "The Force is disturbed here, Master. As I've never felt it before. " A familiar line appeared between his brows. "The boy. Every time we're together…."

"It's the vergence," Qui-Gon quietly asserted. "It is the will of the Force that you encounter him, Obi-Wan. Few are privileged with such …extravagant guideposts along the Way. It would be folly to persist in denial."

However softly couched, the admonition stung. The younger man cocked a brow, mouth thinning. "So now I'm his _sponsor?_"

"There was a time," the Jedi master reminded him, "When you were more willing to extend compassion to a pathetic life form here and there. Perhaps you should see him in light of potential – someone who might benefit from, say…. proper mentorship."

Obi-Wan looked utterly apalled, now. "Stop daydreaming," he groused. "The boy is… is _disobedient._ Reckless. Headstrong. Volatile. Obstinate. And he talks too much."

The older man's rich chuckle was a cascade of honey-gold in the Force.

His former padawan scowled ferociously. "It is _not_ funny, Master."

"You're right," Qui-Gon smiled, forcibly suppressing his upsurge of mirth. "It is sublime justice."

"Now I know you've lost your wits," his companion snarked. A dismissive hand gesture. "There's no point in _discussing_ this with you."

The smaller of Tatooine's two suns dipped below the bleak horizon. "Not at this time, anyhow," the Jedi master concurred. "We need to get head back… and you have your own objectives to meet. Be careful out there, Obi-Wan."

Disharmony smoothed into habitual camaraderie. "I won't do anything you wouldn't," came the inevitable smirking rejoinder. "So how bad can it be?"

Grimacing, Qui-Gon gripped his friend's shoulder. "I will make arrangements to take Anakin back to Coruscant – for his own safety. It's the only option. After that, the Council will decide his fate. " His fingers applied an encouraging pressure. "Let that suffice for you."

Obi-Wan dipped his head, in gracious surrender to the inevitable, the reasonable. "As you say…. though I still have a bad feeling about it," he sighed.

"And this changes what?"

They exchanged one last rueful smile and sallied down the ramp, just as the subject of their heated interchange finished "tuning up" the bike.

"Okay!" the lad beamed. "Ready to ride. And I disabled the fuel efficiency monitor, too, so we can go _choobazzi_ fast!"

* * *

"He's finally gone round the bend," Obi-Wan decided. "Too much Living Force communion…. addles the brain. There was that fellow mentioned in one of Master Seva's memoirs - a Jedi who identified so strongly with plants that he eventually lost contact with other sentients and took to living in the Temple's meditation gardens… Ben To insists that the tale is apocryphal, of course, but I'm inclined to believe it. What do you think?"

The eopie flapped its prodigious nostril-slats and plodded onward, complacent.

"I haven't time to champion the cause of every grimy-faced prodigy we encounter in the wide galaxy. I've _pirates_ to apprehend, for one thing. I let them take the swoop already, so Little Ani-kins can get to bed on time. I've _done_ my part."

His placid mount snorted its condolences and ambled onward, wide feet navigating the treacherous sand slopes with practiced ease.

The young Jedi shifted on the hard saddle, wishing the local customs included _stirrups._ Hardy and sure-fotted the eopie might be – and marvelously adapted to a climate without water – but a smooth ride its halting, jerking gait was not. He was beginning to identify with Torbb's complaints about the grav-bike seats. He squinted over the night-blanketed landscape, estimating the distance to his destination. A hearty sigh escaped him, echoed by his amicable steed.

"You're telling me," he grumbled.

The eopie shook sandfleas from its hide and plodded on.

The Jedi hunched vexedly beneath his voluminous cowl, and brooded on.


	15. Chapter 15

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 15**

The return journey to Mos Espa proved longer than anticipated, their speed and maneuverability significantly hampered by the need to tow Anakin's podracer and its engines behind the swoop, and by Qui-Gon's desire to avoid what few predators he could sense prowling over the open sands. By the time the settlement's humble outskirts were visible, the boy was almost slumped over the handlebars, fast asleep.

The tall master nudged his small companion into wakefulness as they approached the city's far reaches. "Anakin. You'll need to return the 'pod to its hangar…. Where do you stable it?"

"Hhnuuunh?" came the groggy answer. Then, "Oh, uh… this way. Over there…."

By the time they had successfully stowed the illicit racing machine under its tarps in a warehouse adjacent to Watto's backlot, Anakin had perked up sufficiently to re-engage in conversation. He wended his way through the township's eerily silent streets, hand clasped firmly in his much taller guide's. "So how come you never told me Mister Obi-Wan was a Jedi too? 'Cause I didn't think Jedi Knights could be that young and all."

Qui-Gon smiled to himself. "Everyone must start _young,"_ he pointed out. "Even Jedi. And Obi-Wan, some might say, was born old, so don't let appearances deceive you."

The boy mulled this over. "I like him," he said, after due and sober consideration.

"Oh? I am glad to hear it. He is a good friend of mine. And a very wise man, though he is still growing into it."

"And," Anakin pointed out, "he was _wizard_ with his laser sword! I've never _seen _ fighting like that! And he almost blitzed that scary guy. Do you think… I mean, you know like how we talked….. do Jedi – do Jedi study sword fighting like that in school? 'Cause maybe that's sorta different than what I thought."

His companion's brows rose. "Ah. Jedi study many things, the art of combat among them. Also diplomacy, cultures, literature and the fine arts, the sciences, astrocartography and navigation, languages, mathematics, history and political theory. But above all, the ways of the universal Force, that which we serve. "

The youngling scratched his nose with his free hand. "Like in boring classes?"

"Some of it," Qui-Gon chuckled. "But much is taught one-on-one. For example, Obi-Wan was my apprentice. Are you familiar with that idea?"

"Is it like a servant?" Anakin tentatively guessed. "…I heard him call you _Master," _he added, with a faint note of accusation.

"It merely means _teacher," _ the tall man hastened to assure him. "We traveled together for many years, as a team, and in that time I strove to impart to him all that I could of the Force, and of life. This is another way Jedi grow in knowledge and wisdom. In some sense, experience is the _only_ teacher; all that we may do is point the way."'

This profound reflection was met with a wide yawn. "….'kay," Anakin mumbled, too exhausted to absorb anything more.

* * *

"I can never thank you enough," Shmi Skywalker murmured, carefully pouring from the dented tea-infuser. "Ani can be so… impulsive. He knows better than to travel in the desert at night… I don't know what he was thinking. You may have saved his life. You… and your friend."

Qui-Gon sipped the weak brew, cautiously formulating his next words. "I do not wish to cause you further alarm, but your son was almost the victim of a kidnapping tonight."

Shmi's hand trembled; she set the battered kettle down. "Tuskens?" she whispered, face blanching.

The indigenous tribe was a byword among Tatooine's more urban settlers, a synonym for _murder_ and _rapine._ "Sadly," the Jedi master replied, "Something much worse. An… enemy of the Jedi."

A disbelieving shake of the head. "I don't understand."

He reached across the table and laid a hand upon the woman's slender arm, sending a soothing wave of the Force to partially assuage her mounting anxiety. "I think you do. You know that Anakin is… special."

Shmi nodded, mutely.

Qui-Gon released a long breath. "I believe that dark powers may be seeking him, or someone like him. Because of his … unique qualities."

Tears formed in Shmi's limpid, dark eyes. "Can you not protect him?" she implored.

"The only means by which I may guarantee his safety is this: I must take him with me to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. There he would be safe from such adversaries… and if the Council permits it, he could learn some of our ways. Enough, perhaps, to protect himself, in the future."

Shmi swallowed, eyes still glittering. "He would be… a Jedi?"

"The future is always in motion. He has unusual potential, and was surely born to important purpose. Much more than a life of slavery."

The aggrieved mother looked away, bosom rising and falling in steady rhythm. "I might never see him again," she sighed. "But…. I can live, no matter what befalls me, knowing that he is free. "She frowned. "Are you…. what about Watto? He will ask a criminal price."

"I have funds – and the discretion to use them, in such extraordinary circumstances."

Shmi exhaled, a great sigh of relief and acceptance. "I knew that he would leave me someday… but have you spoken to him? He will be afraid, you know – no matter what he says."

A perceptive statement; Anakin appeared uncowed by the prospect of mortal peril, by the undertaking of any task. But he had never been parted from his dam, never imagined fulfilling his wild ambitions and dreams without the anchor and counterweight of her earthy wisdom, her unconditional love. To whisk an eight year old child across the stars, into a wholly foreign environment, would be traumatic enough; compound the difficulty by leaving the youngling's beloved mother in duress…. It was not a viable plan. Shmi would also have to be freed, if only to provide Anakin the barest modicum of security. Fear, fear and _anxiety_ and resentment_:_ virulent, seductive paths to the Dark side, all of them. And the Dark was reaching for this strange boy already, eager to snatch him up before any other principality could.

His mind sped along the avenues of possibility: Shmi had doubtlessly compiled many small, technical skills; she was intelligent and observant; though accustomed to hardship, she had not been abused to the point of debility. It should be possible for her to reintegrate into another society, perhaps not a Coreworld megalopolis, or the sophisticated milieu of Alderaan or Naboo… but… what if the Derridas? – or if Dex knew of -? Or if –

"Master Jinn?"

"Forgive me; there are many details to be considered." He stood, and bowed. "Thank you for the tea. DO not let me keep you from your rest – dawn is mere hours away."

Shmi glanced over one shoulder, into the small alcove sleeping room where Anakin snored away blissfully, wrapped in a tattered knot-weave blanket. Scraps of machinery and circuit insulation littered his packed-earth floor; simple childhood toys and half-stripped cybertronic motherboards adorned the otherwise bare walls. The Force _roiled_ within the small space, a vast nebula of destiny compacted beneath this humblest of roofs.

"Yes, thank you," the lady of the house murmured, smiling ruefully as the tall man took his pensive leave.

* * *

The two brash scouts had died as warriors, befitting their rank and calling. Cauterized gashes scarred their pasty flash, now exposed to the sun and wind where the ritual wrappings had been torn away, an obscenity more offensive than mere mutilation of the body. The Watcher circled his latest victims contemplatively, lip curling, head coked to one side. Beneath the obscuring layers of linen and starched therm weave, the Raiders were shriveled, pallid, and repugnant. Sores dotted their limbs and torsos, places where a grain of sand had worked its way beneath the tight layers, abrasions that had grown into festering pits, then scabbed-over craters. The cadavers looked like broken arthropods skinned of their exoskeletons, left to roast upon death's bleak shores.

The Dark lapped and foamed at his heels, sibilant waves licking at the edges of oblivion. He wetted his lips and sucked in a deep breath, tasting the sharp wind. Dawn was coming.

When these two _fools_ were missed, their fellows would come looking. And the desecration here enacted: the slain warriors, the rotting krayt's corpse, crawling with the ravenous forms of scavengers – some already sniffing at the new feast laid out for their pleasure, the beetles already glutting themselves on glazed eyes and worming their way into unprotected, moisture-rich orifices…. When they beheld all this, the wrath of the tribe would flare high, a consuming bonfire.

And when the arrogant settlers arrived on the scene, innocent of the night's predations, there would be yet more blood. The Watcher need not even lift a finger to butcher such unworthy victims. The cycle of warfare, of petty strife, would leave a broad swath of crimson upon the sand, a fourth offering upon this already reeking altar.

And with the wholesale slaughter of innocents – Tuskens, farmers, both, it mattered little – the final bait would be laid, and the last course in this banquet of death served. The Jedi master would come flying to the scene, an angel bent on his mission, a guardian of _justice,_ an old fool led like a bleating lamb to the slaughter. And to _that _sacrifice there would be but one chosen witness, one who would be irrevocably stained by its hot and bitter outpouring, one _wedded_ to its excoriating memory or to soul-consuming vengeance ever after.

He clawed at the burning wound upon his chest and _longed_ for this next day, for the consummation of his labors. Today, at long last, he would be revealed in his _true_ power. This day, this sacrosanct day beneath hells' leering eyes, he would bring a Jedi to his knees.

And earn the title _Darth._ Lord of the howling Dark.

* * *

The comm connection was fractured, of poor quality and too tenuous to sustain a holographic image. The shuttle's booster was barely strong enough to relay the signal to the nearest hub; Qui-Gon stood on the very outskirts of the settlement and made do with a voice-only transmission to the Temple. He was lucky to achieve that much.

Perhaps he was lucky to achieve that _little; _ he would rather not, for instance, have to _see_ the look on Mace Windu's face as he made his current outrageous request.

"You want a special courier to deliver _how_ much raw aurodium?" the Korun Jedi rumbled, disbelief bleeding through his rich baritone in dripping puddles.

Qui-Gon shifted testily. "Republic credits are worthless this far out. I need to secure the boy's freedom, as speedily as possible."

There followed a significant pause. He could well imagine the _frisson_ currently passing round the Council chamber on Coruscant. "And you ask us to authorize this _purchase_ on the evidence of your word?"

"My judgment, yes." His eyes narrowed, sensing his colleague's dubiety. "There is a significant vergence in the Force here… centering about the boy. Or…"

"Or what, Master Qui-Gon?" old Yoda prompted, impatiently.

The ancient Jedi would only grow more cantankerous were the question evaded. Qui-Gon braced himself. "Obi-Wan encountered him first, and felt the disturbance most strongly. I believe that the vergence may be an effect of their proximity to one another… and to the Sith."

The daring assertion fell and shattered like breaking glass. Silence was his only answer for a long handful of seconds.

"Kenobi was ordered back here _days_ ago," Mace growled. "If you are in contact, relay our strong _displeasure_ to him. Tatooine was _not _ on his reported itinerary."

"The Force leads; we obey," Qui-Gon snapped back.

"Like teacher, like student," the Grand Master snorted. "SIth , say you, Qui-Gon? So sure can you be?"

"The same being he has encountered before. We believe it is hunting the boy."

"You _believe_ a great many things, Qui-GOn," came the vexed reply. Mace's tone was clipped, tension-fraught. "All of them highly improbable. The Sith have been extinct for a thousand years; the prophecy of the _Chosen One_ is obscure and difficult to interpret; both you and your former apprentice are currently operating without the sanction of this Council, far outside Republic boundaries and jurisdiction. Tell me why we should risk the Order's resources on another of your quixotic crusades?"

Qui-Gon fumed, grinding a small rock to dust beneath one boot heel.

And then, against all precedent and expectation, his cause won itself a powerful champion.

"We should _risk_ whatever is required," Yan Dooku's silken voice interjected, "Lest we risk the welfare of the Order itself. Qui-Gon is quite justified. If this Council persists in bureaucratic obduracy , I shall fund the transaction from my private familial trust. …. And if a purported Sith is present on Tatooine, we will send a team of Sentinels to the sector posthaste. He _must_ be apprehended."

Blinking in astonishment, the infamous maverick found himself every bit as stunned and speechless as his contemporaries in the Council chamber megaparsecs away. "….Thank you, my master," he managed to stutter out, uttering the phrase with absolute sincerity for the first time in decades.

"Hhmmph," Master Yoda chuffed.

"Very well," Mace conceded, tightly.

A taut, humorless smile seemed to parenthesize Dooku's next words. "Be mindful, my old friend, and exhort Kenobi to the same. A _Sith-_ if indeed this interloper is such – should not be underestimated."

"As you say," Qui-Gon gravely agreed.

"Then may the Force be with you both."

* * *

_**Author's Note: ** As the day of destiny approaches for our protagonists, I feel it is time to decide another point of rampant speculation and dispute: the fate of Obi-Wan's luxuriant Jedi mullet. While authorial privilege grants me sole prerogative to lop it or leave it, I am yet mindful that (in the words of the hero himself) o_urallegiance is to the Republic, Anakin! To democracy! _In the same noble spirit, therefore, it seems fitting to put this burning question To The Vote. All who weigh in by PM or review shall be tallied in the final account. Thus far the ballots have been cast evenly: upon the "Lop It Off" side of the debate we have the openly expressed opinions of Qui-Gon Jinn (1), Bant Eerin (1), and Torbb Bakk'ile (1), while the "Leave It Long" contingent is currently represented by Siri Tachi (3). Those sending in absentee ballots from the netherworld of the Force will not be given special consideration; only Padawan Tachi may cast more than one vote; all responses must be submitted before The End of this present installment. *sharpens virtual barber's shears*_


	16. Chapter 16

**Legacy 4**

* * *

**Chapter 16**

Torbb led the way, enormous boots padding soundlessly down the primordial corridors of the subterranean network, sometimes crouching, often enough squeezing through narrow segues or gaps on hands and knees, once or twice cursing beneath her breath as a particularly constricting passage proved a challenge to her generously-proportioned frame.

"Fierfek," she gasped, wriggling through the last needle's eye aperture between two echoing vaults. "I swear this'll cost me a busted rib."

Obi-Wan slipped through the claustrophobic opening with relative ease, smiling a little at his companion's frustration. "Size matters not," he issued the inevitable pert reminder.

Torbb made a rude hand gesture at him and forged onward.

The final gateway was a low arch. Ducking beneath this portal, they found themselves in the tabernacle of wonders: ageless stalactites hung poised above the black and glossy pool, a vague mineral phosphor glinting like buried starlight in the sacred water's shallows. The cave rose in a stately dome above this precious reservoir; stark line figures adorned the walls, white and red, ochre and gold, millennia old sentinels over the treasure hoard.

The newcomer gazed round in astonishment, eyes wide in the gloom. "By the Force…"

Torbb grunted in agreement. "The Jawas were irate when they discovered this place had been defiled. You can imagine why, seeing it."

Obi-Wan nodded. "I'm surprised tomb raiders haven't already found it… on a world like this, water is liquid aurodium."

"Nobody knows it exists… except apparently Uticus." She skirted round the pool's rime-hardened edge, and pointed into the adjacent cellar-chamber, where pirate booty remained stacked in neat rows, palettes and crates marked with shipping labels, some affixed with code-locks. "He or one of his associates may have stumbled upon it, or wrested its location from an unfortunate victim."

Obi-Wan crouched among the stockpiled goods, squinting at the manifests. "These hail from all over the Rims… many bear Republic shipping codes, though. He's playing a dangerous game, selling so much stolen merchandise. Even this far out."

Torbb joined him, taking inventory of the pirates' loot. "Hence the black market for select buyers. The Hutts must pre-qualify those invited. It's an elite market, and one guaranteed not to ask questions. They'll be coming soon to pick this up. Auction starts after that star-forsaken race."

They returned to the larger cave and sat upon a jutting rock shelf near the black water's edge. Not a breath stirred beneath the stony vault overhead; the Force itself resonated on a single, unwavering note of expectation.

"Everything is ready… with our back up?" the younger Knight inquired.

"Ready as we are," Torbb replied. She crossed both arms over her impressive bosom. "I must thank you once more for accompanying me on this mission. There was no need for you to risk the Council's displeasure on my account."

"I felt it was right," he shrugged. Mutual respect for the other's privacy had been the foundation of their unlikely friendship, and yet – here, now, as they waited to ambush a brigand and his cutthroat accomplices, a certain intimacy seemed to encircle them. He hesitated, then plunged ahead. "You said before that … it was complicated."

His reticent comrade merely grunted her acknowledgement, leaving him to make the next move.

"I met Uticus," he pressed, boldly. "There is… a striking resemblance."

Torbb's ebony topknot swished gently as she turned her face away. "We share a homeworld," she offered. "My people are… recognizable."

A faint ripple appeared upon the pool's obsidian surface, the last echo of a stirring created by their breath. Obi-Wan frowned. "You know him."

"I knew him when he was no more than a petty theif, a highwayman who tormented those more unjust than himself. The Trade Federation suffered at his hands, and the corrupt minions of our native government. I warned him then – not to trespass any further." The imposing Knight released a regretful sigh. "He did not heed the warning."

"Others could have hunted him down."

But Torbb shook her head, obstinately. "It must be me."

"You feel responsible."

"…It is complicated. As I told you."

Having come full circle, they lapsed into silence once more, attentive to the slightest stirring within the Force's quiet susurration. The cave held them clasped in granite-hewn hands, delicately contained within its dark bounds. The pool shimmered beneath its time-carved roof; minutes stretched into measureless spans of patience, waiting… waiting…

And then…

Torbb's chin lifted, as a hound scenting its quarry. "They are coming."

* * *

Cliegg Lars clasped Shmi against his chest, reveling in the soft solidity of her, the feel of her arms beneath his hands, the ridge of her spine beneath the coarse woven fiber. She was too bony for his taste; underfed and hammered thin by a life of worry, of continual labor. He would fix that for her, if he could . If his luck held. But at the moment there was no thought of the future in his mind: SHmi was weeping against his shoulder, pouring out the troubles of a heart too long dammed against such weakness.

"Oh, I die, I die even thinking about it. Oh Cliegg…. My Ani – out there on that desert, the race – how can he even think ? I can't bear it. Why would he do this?"

The moisture farmer petted and soothed and spoke meaningless promises into her ear, until the sobbing subsided and she merely clung to him, a kind of despair anchoring her in place against her last refuge.

"He's a remarkable boy, _mii'ska, _ a wonderful boy. I don't know… but if any human can do it, surely it's your Anakin." Though, he privately admitted, the fatality rate for podracing was close to thirty percent, by the most accurate reckoning. He had not considered this before, in the flush of his first enthusiasm. When he'd placed the fateful bet, the wager on which all their happiness relied, he had not _dared_ think of the risk, the alternative.

He was a fool. Love made men this way: it blinded them, goaded them to absurd undertakings, duped them with impossible promises, dreams and ambitions, the siren call of the miraculous, the heroic. Anakin was no different, with his reckless desire to race and win, to beat the odds, to _save_ his mother and himself from their inexorable fate. He was a man, too, albeit a very small one – and love made him _foolish._ "I'm sorry," he muttered into Shmi's curling dark tresses. "So sorry."

Thankfully, he did not ask. He would confess all, later. When they were safely back…. His imagination placed the happy reunion in his own farm house, around a table groaning with good, hot food, the humble plenty he could provide, the security of _home, of _ family, of permanence and partnership. Shaking his head, he dispelled the fond illusion. That way madness lay.

"Why, why would Watto do this?" Shmi lamented. "He doesn't care for Anakins' safety, only for his accursed _money!"_

Lars sighed. If only the dichotomy were so simple, if only one could be free _or_ endangered, safe _or_ enslaved. Life was full of cruel dilemmas, places where the unwitting could be caught between the bantha's horns. "It wil be all right," he asserted, with all the confidence he could muster.

It had to be.

* * *

Anakin checked over his routers, intakes, thruster boost array, magneto clamps, stabilizer, and repulsor platform for the fifth time. Everything checked out, no missing parts or clipped wires, no fused circuits or loose bits. He slammed the last access panel shut and patted his creation on its not-quite-gleaming, hastily welded flank. Seemed a pity that his racer had no name, like the _Comet Chaser_ or the _Nebula VI, _ or even the _Togo-Typhoon_ over across the hangar. He didn't have proper corporate sponsorship either, or a fancy flag to go with his colors. It was _merblatzu, _ but there was nothing he could do about it.

After the Boonta Eve Classic, _everybody_ would know that this pod was the Fastest Ever Built, and that it was jockeyed by him, Anakin Skywalker, youngest podracing champion in the galaxy. And maybe then he would give his machine a proper moniker. Something fitting its lofty place in the hierarchy of existence, a title fit for a solar chariot. What was the fastest thing in the universe, he wondered?

"Daybreak," he murmured, stroking the pod's featherweight hull again. The Daybreaker. That had potential.

"Whatcha gonna name it?" Kitster demanded, as though reading his thought.

"I dunno… Daybreaker?"

His friend's face rumpled in dubiety. "That's kinda funny," he said. "I mean, it sounds like you're gonna crash or something."

Anakin's temper flared. "Yeah, well better'n naming it something _slow…_ like the _Kitster Coupe."_

"Whatever. You should call it _Ani's Fanny,_ 'cause you're gonna get your butt kicked today," his companion snapped.

"No _I'm_ not!" the aspiring champion hollered.

"You're stupid, Ani! You're bugsquat! Why'd'ya want to go out there anyway?" Kitster demanded, passion overriding his prudence."You're gonnna get creamed, and then I won't have _anybody!"_

"Ya chooto, booki," an oily voice reprimanded them. They whirled on the spot, to see Sebulba the Dug ambling past on his splayed hands. The Dug's double articulated feet dangled at shoulder height, digits wriggling mishceivously.

"Yeah? _You_ keep it down, _sleemo!"_ Anakin retorted, annoyance readily transferring to this new object.

One foot waggled in his face as the Dug's eyes slatted into malicious crescents. "Cooma wah shugawa yolo," he sneered, twirling a drooping mustachio between two toes. "Gleeba, _scug."_

Anakin launched himself bodily at his detractor, but was caught in mid-lunge by a pair of very strong arms.

"Hey! Lemme….. arrrrghrhrhhh! Oh. Uh… Mister Qui-Gon, sir."

Kitster turned tail and fled; Sebulba snickered heartily and went on his way, followed by his sycophantic retinue. Anakin deflated, staring up into the Jedi master's craggy face with anger still smoldering truculently in arctic blue eyes. "He called me a scug."

Qui-Gon was unimpressed. "I have endured far worse insults, " he replied. "On less provocation. Because another being says a thing, it is not thereby rendered true."

"Yeah, but –"

The tall man crouched down, resting on his haunches. From this position, he could look the child directly in the face. "Anakin. This race poses great risk to your life. I want you to promise me something."

"I'm gonna win!" the boy insisted.

He held up a hand. "You do not owe Watto any such loyalty. Complete the course, but stay well back from the main competitors. No life is worth throwing away upon such a trivial undertaking. Promise me you will stay out of the pack and complete the circuits safely. That is all that is required."

If he had hoped for a show of deference, or an obedient "yes, master", he had much still to learn. Anakin's peculiar aura in the Force sparked with infant starfire.

"I need to win," he objected. "I've _gotta_ win, Mister Qui-Gon. I'm gonna free Mom."

Qui-Gon touched the boy's shoulder. "Listen to me. There are other ways to achieve this end. I will help you ; do you trust me?"

"Yes." A frown. "Well, mostly. No offense."

The tall man sighed. "Anakin. You _must_ listen to me. There are other ways to secure your freedom, and that of your mother."

"No!" his small companion roared. "It has to be me! I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna save her and free us! I'm gonna win the race!"

The Jedi master stood, towering over the recalcitrant boy. The Force was turgid, fraught with danger and disturbance far in excess of what this savage race merited. He scowled, reaching out with his senses, searching for… clarity.

But none came. "Promise me," he repeated.

"Okay," Anakin capitulated, with a sullen shrug. "I'll keep away from the pack."

"Better... And _Dayrunner_ would make a fine name for your pod. I once won five thousand credits wagering on a Malastarian pod by that name."

When the imposing Jedi had disappeared into the eager crowds, his head and shoulders visible above most the milling spectators, Anakin signaled his crew of refurbished pit droids and tucked his battered crash helmet under one arm. He would keep his word, and stay well away from the dangerous crowd of main contenders in the race, especially Sebulba. He would do as the Jedi wished, and stay _safe._

… way out in front, where nobody could touch him.

He was gonna win this race. He would win the championship, the fame, the glory, his freedom and his mother's happiness.

Today, he was going to win _everything._

* * *

**_Author's Note:_ **thus far, astoundingly, the vote stands equally divided among those who wish to Chop the Mop and those who wish to preserve its glorious integrity. Dooku, Mace, Feld, Qui-Gon, Bant, Torbb and eleven vocal readers desire to see a trim; while Siri(x3), Ben To, Garen, Zhoa, and another eleven readers stand in favor of a status quo. Two remain undecided, or open to either possibility. And so, we find ourselves in need of a **swing vote. **Jar Jar Binks, where are you? The fate of the galaxy rests in your fumbling hands... or those of the next intrepid reviewer to pronounce upon this gravest of aesthetical dilemmas.


	17. Chapter 17

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 17**

The caves' mouths yawned wide, beckoning the intruding legions into their upper vestibules and corridors. The pirate troupe's footfalls skittered and shied down passages and across domed roofs, a flock of startled avians rousted into flight by some slight movement, a flash of bright color. The Force trilled with their excitement, with expectation, with the bated breath of those who waited within their time-smoothed arcades.

"A little further," Torbb Bakk'ile murmured, knuckles whitening as her broad hand closed about her 'saber's hilt. "They're nearly in the antechamber."

Beside her, Obi-Wan pressed his back against the time-smoothed stone of his chosen eyrie, a jutting shelf just above the last narrow gap, a lookout's nest nestled near the cave dome' s apex. He breathed out, in, loosening the bands of sensory perception, the narrow ruts of instinctual thinking, I-and-thou. A bead of perspiration trickled down his collar, slid along his taut spine. It had been _years_ since he'd practiced this skill, much less deployed it in the course of a mission – but lessons learned at Master Dooku's feet were unlikely to be forgotten, having been imparted and received amidst blood, sweat, and tears.

When the first of the motley crew wriggled his way past the tight barrier, a heavy blaster followed by one arm, one leg, a torso and a horned Iktotchi head wrapped in a dark bandana, he let himself go entirely, sliding into the interstices between appearance and fact, solidity and expectation, where the Force coiled like diaphanous smoke, gusting on the winds of sentient _mind._ The pirates squeezed in one after another – a second, then a third and fourth….

Torbb ignited her blade, eliciting a series of guttural curses and a half-dozen ill-aimed blaster bolts. This initial volley of shots she parried into the high ceiling, blowing chunks out of the living rock. A shower of alabaster dust cascaded around her, a moving veil; on this signal, three dozen hooded figurines – diminutive warriors, an army of stunted allies – appeared from the encircling shadows, every one bearing an upraised glowstick.

"Jedi!" one of the more astute villains bellowed, ending a series of derogatory adjectives to the warning. His mates took up the cry, jostling as they regrouped, as they squinted through the smearing, backlit gloom at the opponents aligned against them.

Obi-Wan raised both hands, unshutteirng his mind, making of himself a conduit – a _prism. _ Fear, suspicion, alarm: these lanced thorugh the plenum, surged through him, were refracted into delusion, into the nightmare phantoms projected by the intruders' own anxiety. Under the shaping influence of _similfuturus, _ the Force-user's power of illusion, every Jawa in the echoing cave appeared another towering copy of Torbb, hooded and armed with blinding light, the hazy realm of perception warped into a hall of mirrors in which the imposing Knight was multiplied into the dozens.

Uticus' minions were undoubtedly weak-minded – but they were not bereft of vital instinct. Faced with a surreal legion of Jedi foes, they fled. Shouts and foul curses boomed and broke in the networks beyond as they retreated, regrouped. Subterranean thunder shook more dust from the cave dome, set the limpid pool's surface to agitated rippling.

"Ha!" Torbb barked, leaping into the narrow gap on the heels of the trespassers, her eager Jawa minions jabbering and gesticulating like a frenetic bezzil hive. "Run while you can, _pizzmahi." _ Her weapon flashed ferociously as she shoved her frame through the gap, eager for battle.

Screams of dismay resounded up the labyrinth's byways as primitive booby-traps were triggered, as ceilings collapsed, as floors crumbled, as escape routes ended in sudden drops. The Jawas knew this place intimately, its every perilous turning mapped in their consciousness like the calligraphy of some beloved poem. Panic stricken, drunk on shared conviction, on an illusion perpetuated and fueled by collective madness, the pirates stumbled into death traps, were herded into endless mazes, buried alive beneath the pitiless desert. Those who turned back found Torbb hounding them; those that fought, lost the battle.

The Force soon thrummed with deafening cacophony, a tuning fork resonant to a hundred dissonant tones.

Obi-Wan's concentration dissolved, and with it the illusion – but for most their foes, it was too late. He gasped, sucking in deep breaths to center himself again, to mesh self and place back into unity. A moment later he leapt from his perch, 'saber in hand, just as a bolder, unfazed party of raiders shoved their way into this inner sanctum.

"Oi!" the foremost of these less gullible brigands shouted. "Stand fast, mates!" his compatriots unholstered their own weapons, fell into aggressive stances in a practiced semi-circle. "No grenades down here, Vork you kark-head. Just get past 'im and get the stuff."

The young Jedi's blade swept in a dangerous arc. "Surrender now and you will not be harmed."

* * *

Anakin wracked his brains for an expletive sufficiently extreme and obscene enough to describe the present state of affairs, but his frantically whirling imagination could only supply him with the standard Huttese default.

"E'chuta!" he gritted out, because Shmi was not here to overhear his foray into adult imprecation, and because his pod, his wonderful incomparable peerless pod, the Fastest Ever Built, was presently sitting behind the start line – full minutes after the other contestants had roared away on the first lap of the Boonta Classic – refusing flat out to _start._

He'd been over every circuit, every connection, every valve … how could this be? How could this happen? His mother's freedom, his future, _everything _depended on this race. It was like the universe was _mocking_ him, taunting him with the inexorablility of bondage, bending the sure staright strokes of his destiny into a gargoylish caricature, into _failure._ He clenched his teeth and cursed a bit more, just like the spacers in the cantinta did when they were angry or deep in their cups…

And then it hit him.

Fingers flying, he ripped out the grav compression decompensator and cross-wired it into the ignition coupler. It was just a safety feature, not something you really needed anyway unless you were a clutz pilot or you wanted to _stop,_ and he was not the first and had no intention of doing the second. With a deafening whine he revved his twin thrusters, rammed the accelerator forward and _shot_ down the central alley, the tiered coliseum-style stands blurring into a nauseating blur as his _beauty,_ his _Dawnrunner,_ his _fleet lightning bolt_ gathered momentum like a class three ion storm breaking in high heaven. The cheers of the crowd were consumed by the wild chorus of his engines, the triumphant war-cry of _power, speed, utter obliterating glory!_

Soon he was rocketing into the desert so fast he couldn't breathe. It was _wizard._

At such speed, he wasn't even sure where the desert ended and his pod began; machine and space melded into a unity, a blinding, blurring _one_ that flowed about him like molten light. He unraveled into it, until his pulse was the rhythm of the intake fans, until his blood was the fusion combustion of the drives, his breath the howl of wind past the viewport, his skin and bones the featherlight hull of his chariot. He _was _the pod, he _was _ the desert, he was _speed itself._

Landforms rose and fell about him, caressing him as they whizzed past a centimeter to either side. Dunes abased themselves before him, cliffs parted to allow him passage, the scorching sand carried him like a wave carries its own foaming froth. The sky itself, the dazzling suns, filled the invisible sails of his ambition. He _melted_ into the race, into his _creation,_ and he did not merely fly. He plummeted through infinite abysses, warping here and there into an ecstatic union.

Within minutes, he had the stragglers in his view. Unleashing another cry of exhilaration, he cut the stabilizer array and _streaked_ toward the pack, his craft wobbling wildly as it hit the pressure differentials left in their wake. Another pilot might have capsized, but he was not _another pilot._ He was the _champion. _ He rode the turbulence, owned it, ruled it, soared into it, overtaking the slowest of his competitors in one blazing comet-tail of raw audacity.

"Whoooooooooopppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" he laughed, shrieking out his delight unto the Force itself.

* * *

Qui-Gon swatted a fly off his earlobe and grunted in vexation. Maintaining a decent comm signal on Tatooine was harder than counting the individual grains of sand in the Temple's meditation rock garden – a grueling and ultimately futile endeavor he had once been set to complete as punishment for rebellion against his Master's dictates. Like any good lesson, its memory endured far past the recollection of what particulars occasioned it.

At last, his vigil was rewarded with a faint sputter of recognizable sound.

"Jinn," he growled, straining to decipher the jumble of interference and frazzled syllables coming through the tenuous 'link.

"… Compromised sample…." Senior Healer Ben To Li's voice came through, in a terse spurt of clarity.

The tall man's spine stiffened. "I assure you it was _not. _ I took that blood sample myself, and ran a control on my own to calibrate the analyzer bands. It's legitimate."

There followed another burst of interstellar static, then, "…Impossible."

"Who is to say what is _possible_ with the Force?" the Jedi master demanded of his obstreperous colleague. "What was the reading?"

Ben To's next reply was lost in transmission, except the most salient piece of information. "…ten thousand," the healer scoffed. "Off the scale."

Qui-Gon smiled, grimly. He was right about the boy, though what it meant, he had no well-defined notion. "The Force is strong with him. He should be brought back to the Temple, if at all possible. You can retest yourself, Ben To, but believe me, that reading is no mistake."

A dubious muttering was his only answer for several long seconds. The revered healer ended his unheard diatribe with a question ending in "…Obi-Wan?"

"He's here, too. I'll haul him home so soon as we are finished with our business in this system."

Master Li's parting words were completely obliterated by atmospheric disturbances and ion degradation. Qui-Gon closed the link with a curt gesture and stuffed his device back into its belt pouch. However skeptically the discovery might be received by his peers, it spoke volumes to him. Anakin, for better or for worse, was far more than a talented street urchin from a backwater world. He was… unique. Special. And for those reasons, he was _wanted._

There could be no question of leaving him obscurity, only of determining which _side_ of the eternal conflict seized him for its own. The fate of the galaxy might hinge upon that one portentous act. And since he had been appointed by the Force to _identify_ the child, it fell upon him to insure his future safety, the integrity of his future _self._

Anakin should be trained. He should be taught. It was the Will of the Force, his appointed path. And on that fateful road, the boy would need the best and wisest guide, the most cunning and courageous of teachers. The Force was no nursemaid, but neither was it a miser ; surely it had appointed a Chosen one to _that_ role as well.

His heart skipped a beat, the simple, the _obvious_ truth reeling in his inward heavens like the dizzying double corona of the suns overhead. Of course. It explained everything. It was meant to be, a vergence in the Force itself – subtle, delicate, exquisite. It was _perfect._

But it was going to be infernally difficult to make _Obi-Wan_ see his point of view.

* * *

The Watcher presided over the opening ceremonies from a distance, aloof from the petty butchery wrought by those below. The inept moisture farmers had arrived first, supposing themselves inviolate in their superiority of numbers, in their possession of firearms; they had picked off a few of the larger scavenging creatures, poked at the festering krayt's flesh, and then – imbecilic beasts that they were – one or two of their brash younger members had _defiled_ the bodies of the fallen Tuskens yet further by touching the exposed flesh with the butts of their weapons.

Retribution had been swift and brutal. The ambush caught its victims unaware, felling four of them before the stricken interlopers knew what had hit them. The Sand People were veteran warriors, every one of them, merciless and accurate. They preferred the long, weighted staves of their ancestral tradition to the long-range blaster rifles. The Watcher observed impassively as they caved in the skulls of the men they had executed, defiling their bodies as those of their brethren had been made unclean.

The resulting firefight – a nasty, undisciplined guerilla scuffle erupting about the dragon's rotting bones – had left a half dozen dead upon either side. The remaining farmers huddled in a quivering knot to one side, while the irate Tuskens regrouped for a final and devastating assault.

But that would not serve the Watcher's purposes, and he grew weary of his passive role.

Death was greedy, greedy like an animal, but the Dark: the Dark's voracity was of another order, one more demanding. This impromptu abbatoir was not _enough,_ not cruel enough a vise in which to trap a servant of the puking, mewling Light. He hefted his weapons' hilts and strode serenely down the ridge, intent upon the hateful spectacle unfolding upon the stage below.

And took matters into his own hands, shaping the massacre into something worthy of his calling, transforming the unbridled wrath of these ignorant novices into a high and holy ritual of _hate._

* * *

**_Author's Note: _**_thanks to a sudden proliferation of anonymous votes pleading the case of Long Hair, the debate is once again locked in an even stalemate! I note that Cerasi and Jar Jar Binks have proffered opinions on the matter, and I suspect that at least one diehard enthusiast has submitted multiple ballots under the moniker "Guest" - a subterfuge worthy of the Negotiator and therefore legitimate. In short, it seems that we must resort to aggressive negotiations to bring this to a resolution. I look forward to the fracas. -rb_


	18. Chapter 18

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 18**

It was not a good day for scum and villainy.

"Karking son of a half-bred trollop!" the most vociferous brigand snarled, emptying his blaster's entire clip in his unexpected foe's general direction. He might as well have shot plasma bolts into a solar wind; the only result was a deadly spray of rebounded energy packets, a hailstorm which blasted into the cave walls, the stagnant pool, and directly _back_ at him and his comrades, inspiring an operatic medley of curses and threats.

For his part, Obi-Wan found it both amusing and good practice. Soresu was not a combat form he had perfected to his own exacting standards; patiently repelling several hundred lethal projectile blasts at close quarters with no room for error was a delightful change of pace from skulking about and _waiting_ for something to happen. He grinned, weapon in smooth perpetual motion, its sonorous reverberation a soloist's flawless aria.

The other two pirates charged, forcing him to backflip away toward the water's edge. A rogue shot form their companion grazed past his shoulder but missed; he landed a trifle off balance and had to duck and roll to avoid further damage, but quickly regained the upper hand when his overenthusiastic assailants closed hand to hand. With his associates locked in strife so close to the target, the first villain was forced to cease fire, leaving the young Jedi with only two immediate threats to life and limb.

The foremost of which went sailing across the rough-hewn chamber to crash heavily into its opposite wall. He hit with a painful thud, slid to the crater-pocked floor, and slumped in an insensate heap.

"You _chisszzk-_ eating chob gobber!" his Weequay crewmate hissed, brandishing a curved and serrated vibro-blade.

Obi-Wan's brows rose. A _scimitar,_ for Force's sake?

Of course, the blaster in the fellow's _other_ hand made a fair argument for creative combat solutions; the 'saber took care of _that_ inconvenience in a single sweeping cut, while he raised his left arm to catch the downward stab intended for his neck. The ensuing tussle was short but violent; they both toppled backward into the pool, sending up a frantic spray of droplets as they thrashed and rolled. The knife was kicked from its owner's hand, the severed blaster seized and tossed aside, and the miscreant himself flung over one shoulder into the shallows, where he wheezed and groaned, one hand clutching at his solar plexus.

On purest reflex, the young Jedi raised his blade to deflect the murderous shot aimed at his head from across the cave; the bolt glanced straight off the sapphire beam into its source, instantly felling the third pirate.

'Saber thrumming hot at the sprawling Weequay's throat, he stood and dripped ominously over his captive. "Don't try _anything."_

"Kriff-head," his vanquished foe muttered, still clutching at his ribs.

"_Master_ Kriff-head_,_ if you please." An insouciant smirk. "We're not on a first name basis yet."

The moment of levity was obliterated by a resounding explosion; amid a choking cloud of grit and dust, the narrow cave-door blew wide open, leaving a gaping hole through which a truly hulking silhoueete emerged.

"What's this _meerblatzu_ cock-up about, you wretched slime?" a rolling baritone demanded.

Uticus' imposing figure stood straight and tall, blaster in one hand and electro-whip in the other, extravagant top-knot falling over impossibly bulky shoulders. He squinted at his fallen crewmen and scowled, dark eyes glittering beneath a mountainous brow. He locked gazes with the 'saber wielding stranger at the water's edge, then glanced at the Weequay writhing at his feet.

"That was a mistake, runt. Nobody takes out my first mate and lives to tell the tale."

"We'll keep it confidential," Obi-Wan snipped.

The massive pirate captain glowered, eyes narrowing – and then froze on the spot as the distinctive sibilant snap of an ignited lightsaber sounded directly behind him.

He turned, slowly, a vein in his corded neck twitching erratically. Even Uticus had to look _up_ slightly to meet Torbb Bakk'ile's irate gaze. She stood framed in the ragged aperture created by his forcible entry, black synthleather tabards grimed with dust, dark robes billowing in majestic lines to the floor, her black hair and severe expression a fitting match to his own.

"Hells' moons," the infamous privateer breathed. "…_Torbb."_

The enormous Knight took a single step forward, weapon thrumming with banked menace. "I _ warned_ you," she growled. " _I told you."_

A delicate, but unmistakable frisson ran through the Force, uniting the two ebony-haired giants in a wordless understanding, binding them into a fragile unity. Obi-Wan stirred, reacting to the flare of resentment emanating from Uticus.

But Torbb held up a restraining hand, eyes flashing. "He's mine , Kenobi. This is _personal."_

* * *

Shmi's fingernails were _bruising_ Cliegg's arm where she clutched at him in wordless distress, her eyes fixed in horror upon the viewer screen he'd rented at the concession stand. High in the cheap "nose bleed" seats at the arena's top tiers, they were surrounded by other racegoers with nothing better to do on this festival day, by drunks and gamblers and pickpockets and laggards – but the poor women had eyes for nothing but the tiny speck of her son's podracer, just visible as a glint of light far, far behind the race leaders. Most the cam-bots swarmed the first cluster of vehicles, so most the footage showed their hair-raising progress along the course; through narrow canyons, beneath low stone arches, along ridged valleys, up steep slopes and over the open desert they hurtled, twin engines yoked by energy couplers, stripped down chariots skimming behind them at fatal speeds.

One or two chassis had already come loose from their moorings and careened headlong into stone columns or cliffsides. The resulting explosions had elicited wild cheers of approval from the crowd, and appalled gasps from Shmi. Cliegg endured the spectacle stoically, heart pounding with only one thought:

Anakin was still far behind. His one chance was slipping through his fingers.

He boldly slipped an arm around his beloved's waist – something he had never yet dared to do in public – and he was not rebuffed. Pressed against him, clothing damp from perspiration where the sun beat down upon them through the insufficient awnings, she seemed to melt into a mirage, the raving delusion of a sun-stricken traveler, one about to perish of dehydration on the cusp of an illusory lake.

Cliegg drank deeply of false happiness. Better this than nothing at all, better this present deception than all the inexorable loneliness of the bleak future.

"Oh!" Shmi cried out as the cambots' focus zoomed in upon the race leaders again. Sebulba and the four pod-jockeys vying most closely for lead position had just roared past a series of jutting rock formations at the hills' base, and mounted a steep duneside, when they veered wildly in all directions. Just over the sandy horizon, a sleek starship sat moored – and just behind it, rumbling forward in a drunken stupor, one of the Jawas' lumbering sand crawlers. The colossal treaded machine bore down upon the ship, as though intent upon collision. Several high-power plasma bolts blasted out of the ship's forward cannon but dispersed harmlessly upon the crawler's thick outer hull – even Cleigg knew that weapons designed for zero-grav conditions would not work properly in atmosphere – and then, in a cataclysmic conjunction, the crawler outright _smashed_ the smaller ship flat. Flames billowed, pieces cracked and shattered, debris spiraled off in long trailing smoke trails, the crawler lurched and bumped, ground to a halt and then wobbled forward, caterpillar feet chugging and churning over the ruinous mass beneath it.

The crowd lost its head – this was better than anything they had expected or paid for, and its effect on the race was disastrous. The pods had spun off in all directios to avoid disaster, but their flight was ill-fated, for a fleet of smaller craft – skiffs and gravbikes, swoops and skimmers – appeared from a subterranean cave nearby, insects spiling in a panic from their violated hive. These enraged newcomers set off after the flustered racers, smaller weapons blazing. A fretwork tapestry of red and yellow bolts drove the cam-bots backward, temporarily interrupting the vid-feed; Tatooine's bloodthirsty crowds, watching from klicks away, jeered and booed in dismay.

At last, one beleaguered recording device hovered in close enough to chronicle Sebulba's dramatic fate at the hands of a shrieking Klatooinian pirate astride a modified swoop. The Dug's racing machine went up in a shooting fireball as one of its engines combusted; another racer veering away from his own pursuer was caught in the explosion's annihilating shock radius. The others were ruthlessly gunned down or sent headlong to their deaths against the unforgiving rocks.

Shmi buried her face against Cliegg's shoulder; he stroked her cheek with one calloused hand.

But he also held his breath: for just behind the scene of disaster, mere seconds too late to be implicated, another silver pod streaked past. It was difficult to identify the pilot, for the discombobulated droids did not focus upon him long enough to produce a clear holo – but it was _possible…_ it was just possible…

"He wasn't in that crash, dear heart. He's all right."

He was more than all right. The wonder boy was, by default, against all expectation , against all likelihood, _going to win._

* * *

The Tuskens he granted the courtesy of swift death, for they were warrior brutes, simple and uncomplicated, and he did not need them.

His crimson blade decapitated each and every one of them, leaving their heads staring up at the suns through the binocular tubes thrust between their wrappings. They had come here to die, and he had bestowed upon them this final benison – a clean and painless demise. The farmers, on the other hand… groveling, cowardly, terrorized by his appearance, by his display of _dominance,_ these were something far different.

These were slaves.

To these men he could give something far more lasting, far more meaningful than mere death. He had them on their _knees_ and begging for his mercy, suckling pigs drinking at the Dark's succulent, over-ripe teats. Fear kindled in them a hunger for life; fear fed that longing until they were glutted on terror, obeisant to his smallest command; fear rendered them trembling, sweating, irrational, sycophantic, _despairing._

One or two feigned stoicism, and knelt hard-faced while their comrades pleaded for their families, appealed to weaknesses the Watcher did not have. He prowled about them, where they marinated in their own tears and stench, kneeling in a tight knot, their weapons cast aside, their eyes roving over the scattered bodies of their friends, of the native raiders, of animals great and small, the deep-hued stains upon the white sand, the bones of the krayt curving upward from the desert like the exposed ribs of some sunken vessel – gaunt, bleached, a vast skeletal calligraphy against the heat-drenched sky.

He trod a majestic, leisurely circuit about them, watching them cower. They had seen his weapon, they had seen his power. He need issue no threat, utter no reminder. They were _his,_ a currency of use in only one exchange, a bait to lure in his final victim. He had but to be patient, to wait while the filthy weaklings stained the Force's currents with their dread and desperation. Sooner or later, the Jedi would _feel_ the disturbance, as a deep-ocean fish _feels_ the subtest of ripples, discerns the presence of a predator nearby.

"Who are you?" one of the youngest humans exclaimed, anguish roughening his thirst-cracked voice. He looked up, incomprehension and revulsion stamped upon round, simpleton's features.

The Watcher halted, leaning in to leer at this bold one. "I am your _lord."_

"We've done nothing to you! Nothing!" the distraught youth cried. "I've never seen you before!"

His repugnance and terror rose like incense in the Dark, sweet aromas to block out the tang of other bodily fluids. Some of the pathetic worms had soiled themselves, vomited in the extremity of their fear. The Watcher smiled, mirthlessly, baring his teeth. "But you will never forget me."

He snarled in contempt for these rank fools and continued his measured prowl about them.

Soon, soon… here at the center of his self-made vortex, he had but to abide in patience and wait, whle all things were drawn inexorably unto him, the eye of a dark storm, the monster laying in wait at the whirlpool's black heart.

He smirked in wicked satisfaction.


	19. Chapter 19

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 19**

"How is it that you are _here?"_ the astounded pirate barked, still addressing Torbb.

"I've been looking for you a _long while,_" she replied. "As for your loot, this secret den ?" One huge hand swept about the ruined cave, the muddied water. "It was the will of the Force that brought me here. As it was that brought _you._ It is over, Uticus."

The towering captain snorted. "Empty words, like your previous threats."

Obi-Wan scowled. "You are cornered, your crew disbanded. Surrender."

But Uticus merely chuckled, a rasping hiccup devoid of humor. "Who is this sanctimonious errand boy, Torbb? The Jedi Order must be desperate."

"Drop your weapons and submit to arrest," the enormous Knight snapped back. "Enough stalling."

The pirate captain sighed, then turned his head over one shoulder, looking with pity upon his Weequay mate. "Let Shau'we go," he said. "Let us speak… in private."

To her colleague's astonishment, Torbb nodded in consent. Obi-Wan deactivated his saber, permitting the gasping prisoner to shamble his way past Torbb and out into the passages beyond, where the jabbering voices of Jawas no longer chorused and echoed among the ancient stones. His unsteady footfalls pattered into oblivion, wrapping the three inside the inner sanctum in a mantle of silent expectation.

Torbb closed the distance between herself and her quarry, face hardened into inscrutable lines. "I told you I would find you. I told you I would stop you. Why did you not believe me?" A note of regret crept into her otherwise unrelenting tone. "I thought you knew me better than this."

Uticus smiled, a very little, chin high and mouth straight. "I surrender to no one. Even to you."

The tall Jedi released a long breath, the Force simmering in agitation about her. She swallowed, hard. "Hear me now. I the name of the Galactic Republic, you are under arrest for murder, theft, smuggling, piracy and countless other crimes. Lay down your weapon and _submit."_

Her massive adversary growled deep in his throat. "Never."

"Then so be it," Torbb rasped out.

In the next instant, they had joined battle, two titans falling upon each other with all the unbridled ferocity of opposed elements, of primordial enmity.. of impassioned lovers. Uticus' final war-cry howled clear and curdling within the cave's broad dome; Torbb's 'saber blade sang a single, agonized chord; the pirate's head toppled form his shoulders, hit the scarred floor, and rolled to the pool's edge wrapped in a shroud of its own silken hair. His body crumpled and collapsed a moment later, in a graceful encore to the act.

Torbb stood, weapon pulsing forlornly in her hand, her head bowed and eyes closed in grief.

Obi-Wan exhaled, grimly. It was done. Whatever it was.

A moment later, his fellow Jedi spoke. "It is finished." Her blade snapped back into its hilt. "I have done what I must." She looked up at him, mutely pleading for absolution.

He glanced from the grisly severed head to the lifeless corpse beside it, then up at Torbb again. "Who was he to you? I sensed…. "

"You sensed my folly," she retorted, abruptly resuming her customary brusque manner. She replaced the weapon's hilt at her belt, though a tremor in her tendon-knotted hand betrayed inner turmoil.

Obi-Wan dipped his head. "Forgive me."

Torbb sighed, crossing both arms over her chest, then relented. "No. Forgive me. I am in your debt; never would I have been able to run him to ground without your help. You have lent me your strength without demand for return, and I have repaid you in discourtesy."

"There was no offense taken," he assured her. "Your past is your own."

"No." The enormous woman smiled wanly. "Nothing is our own, in such a sense. I will tell you. "

The caves' petroglyphs seemed to crowd round, a jury of stark witnesses. The pool stilled into calm, reflecting the dim phosphorescence of the walls.

"Who was he to me? My cousin. We were betrothed before I was born – a planetary custom, you understand."

Obi-Wan nodded, offering no comment.

Torbb gathered her thoughts. "I returned to my homeworld briefly, many years ago, before I was Knighted, to broker an _agreement._ Our people are few in number, and not fecund. The Council had initially approved an _exception_ to the precepts. Master Mundi was instrumental in this, you understand."

"Yes." There existed among the Jedi a rare few who… exercised certain rights, without attachment. The Cerean Councilor was a well-known example; he maintained four wives on his native planet, for the purpose of further propagating the nearly extinct Cerean race. While the matter was a subject of predictable jest among junior padawans, it sometimes came under more sober scrutiny at higher levels. But he personally had not contemplated its nuances in a long while – since sanctioned exceptions to the Jedi rule of life, such as that Torbb described, were rarer than a dwarf Wookiee.

"It proved.. inexpedient… to proceed with the arrangement," she continued. "The indigenous law was too convoluted and uncompromising to permit me to remain within the Order once a marriage was contracted. After nearly a month of … negotiations, my master and I declined the offer and closed the discussion as diplomatically as possible."

_Negotiations. _Obi-Wan raised a brow. "Uticus was… offended by your refusal?"

" It is not that simple."

No… it must not be. And in that month of negotiations, what had she allowed herself to contemplate? To _desire? _ Torbb was a creature of flesh and blood, as were they all. "You were… disappointed?" he ventured. _Heartbroken._ Though she should not have been.

Torbb shot him a bitter look. "We are seekers, not saints," she said, frowning. "I … "

He waited, heart twisting at his comrade's halting confession. It was, as she had so often told him, _complicated._ How many years had she struggled with a flame forbidden, then suddenly stoked by unexpected possibility, then once more forbidden? How often had she managed, in the course of interstellar journeys, to arrange a brief liaison with her enigmatic relative-cum-suitor? When had he turned to piracy, causing her to issue an ultimatum, and _in extremis_ to keep her vow to the Order and the Republic above all other claims, legitimate or otherwise? Had she dreaded that moment, or longed for the release it represented - for disobedience to exact its own punishment, for an aching wound to be cauterized? Was she to be censured or pitied?

"I am sorry," he said, quietly.

Torrb dipped her head, then bowed. "I have erred, and my shame is deserved." She straightened, and turned her back upon him, shoulders briefly quaking. "By your leave, brother…. I will burn his body. Alone."

It was fitting, and he had no stomach to refuse her request. "Of course." Carefully avoiding eye contact, he slipped past her and wended his way up and out of the caves, mindful that the Jawas and their victims had long since fled into the desert, leaving the catacombs in melancholy solitude.

* * *

Sky and sand and the _thunder_ of his twin drives singing in his blood, Anakin _screamed_ past the finish line in a blaze of triumph, elation ripping loose from shi throat in a long howl of release, of victory, of conquering glory!

The wind whipped the sound away, and he shouted again, the sound of his own voice blended with the pandemonium of the crowds, the blaring of trumpets and gongs in the Hutts' pavilion, the terrified bleating of pit droids and gonk units as they scattered before him.

Because he couldn't slow down, much less stop.

"Ooops," he grimaced, holding onto the yoke for dear life and blasting clean out of the arena again, back into the open desert. The stultified announcer's amplified voice boomed over the barren plains, calling for him to come back – but it wasn' t like he had a choice. With the small _modifications_ he'd made just to get his racer started, his only option was to fly the pod until his engines ran out of fuel and grounded him. A swift calculation told him this would take less time the _faster_ he went, and a brief glimmer of common sense told him that he would do better not to streak a few hundred klicks into the Dune Sea only to be stranded without hope of return. He settled on a wide circuit of Mos Espa and the surrounding environs, and opened the throttle.

The sooner he was able to _stop,_ the sooner he could get back to town and claim his prize.

_Freedom!_

Watto the Toydarian was beside himself.

"What are you talking about you _uppazzi-_brained _sleemo_? He's _my_ slave boy!"

But the obstinate racing official was having none of it, and the pair of Hutt-employed enforcers standing at his elbow lent credence to his argument. "You never entered him under your creds… he's not registered as your entry. So the prize money don't go to you!"

"But I fronted the _entry fees_ for him! That counts for something!" Even if it was under the table, not official.

"Get lost," the fat Ruusan sniffed.

Hovering in an infuriated circle, the junk dealer tugged at his scraggly beard and wrung his hands. "All right, all right… you hand over the prize money to _him,_ eh?" under Tatooinian law, a slave could not own property unless approved by his owner. It would be a simple matter to wrest the substantial winnings from the snotty little buki's clever hands, and –

"Slaves can't collect money in their own right," the official scoffed. "You're out of luck."

"What?" Spittle flecks gathered at the corners of Watto's mouth. "What? Then who gets the moolasa, eh? Eh?"

A diffident shrug. "Nobody, I guess. Too bad. Now get lost."

It was the appearance of Jabba's thugs in the near vicinity that got the Toydarian moving fast in the opposite direction. He made a desperate beeline for the nearest exit, panic starting to claw at his innards; he had lost a devastating sum on Sebulba, and now he couldn't collect on Anakin's miraculous win? His skin was quite literally going to decorate Jabba's palace walls unless he found a way to come up with a staggering sum of cash, _this instant._

He all but collided with the smug figure of Cliegg Lars outside the tented gambling lounge. "You!" he shrieked, snout undulating. The last thing he wanted right now was –

"Mr. Watto," the farmer beamed. "I have a proposition for you."

"I don't have _time _ for your stinking chisszzk, chubaso!" He was ruined, kaput, washed up and in peril of his life. He didn't have time for an impecunious moisture farmer's bantha bollocks, or his -

Wait a minute.

"I think you do, Mr. Watto. Word has it you're in dire need of some cash, and I've just come into some money. Quite a lot of money, actually. I'm sure we can strike a deal."

The Toydarian's heart sank into his gut. _He had _told_ the stinking idiot to bet on his slave boy in the first place -_ ! Choked with irony and rage, he pointed toward the local cantina, and prepared to buy his life and livelihood back at a premium.

And that damned farmer just bounced on his heels and grinned ear to ear, like the luckiest bastard ever born. _Chubazzi sleemo._

"Drinks are on me today ," Lars said.

* * *

"Master Jinn! Master Jinn!"

Qui-Gon forged his way upstream against the current of bodies spilling out the stadium's exit gates, shouldering between boisterous race-goers until he reached Shmi Skywalker's slender form. He carved a path out of the living river and drew her aside, a comforting hand on her arm.

"Where is Anakin?"

She shook her head. "I don't know – he won the race but he didn't stop, he's disappeared into the desert – something must be wrong, Master Jinn! He might be in trouble – a malfunction – and he can't be out there alone-"

"He won the race?" The tall man's sharp frown brought the poor woman up short. "Never mind. Which way did he go?"

She gestured with one hand. "Oh please. Find him. The debt collectors will be coming for me any moment – the auctions start this afternoon, after the race. I might never see him again… " her hands twisted in the worn folds of her skirt, dark eyes brimming with unshed tears.

The Jedi master gently held her upper arms, exerted a reassuring pressure. "I will do all I am able. Be hopeful."

Shmi nodded, melting with gratitude. "I cannot ever repay your kindness," she said.

"We come to serve," he replied, already striding away in search of his borrowed gravbike, and borrowed trouble of the variety so oddly rampant here on this Force-forsaken world.

The race was over, but his intuition told him that the day's revelations were far, far from complete.


	20. Chapter 20

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 20**

He was just blazing past the outskirts of Hell's Gauntlet, giving the narrow canyon a wide berth and sticking to the flat plateau to its eastern side, when things sorta went bottom-up.

The grav decompensator had been his own idea, mostly, if you could call eleventh-hour autosabotage an idea really… but this was something much worse, as in an actual bona fide malfunction. It occurred to Anakin with perfect clarity and far too late that his pod's failure to start had been the result of malicious tampering, probably the handiwork (footiwork?) of that sleemo Sebulba. And that would also explain why his engine couplings were now gradually but surely ratcheting loose.

If his pod separated from its propulsion system at _this_ uncontrolled speed, he would be total bugsquat.

Teeth gritted, something akin to fear – not that he was afraid, just really super _mad-_ roaring behind his ears, he gripped the yoke and swerved out, taking an erratic detour. His mind outraced the hurtling pod, a map of the desert unfurling in his imagination. He knew it like the back of his hand, every bump and dip, every jutting rock ridge, every obstacle whereon he might be smashed to a fiery pulp. He had to get _clear, _ out into the open waste where if he was lucky – if he was _good_- he might make a relatively intact landing.

The magneto-bindings rattled ominously, heralding the imminent separation of chassis and engines. There wasn't time to think, only to choose. He veered south again, the twin suns glaring down on him in dismay, a cockeyed witness to his plight. The desert sped by, a continuous blur, faster and faster; he angled his intakes and cut the rear repulsors, causing the pod's aft to drop. Hunkering behind the viewsheild, he held a steady course, counting the seconds, the long minute…..

And then the tenuous connections snapped, sending his engines rocketing out into utter emptiness like a pair of missiles. They disappeared over a crest and exploded with a deafening _boom._ The pod, abruptly loosed, dropped with a sickening lurch, hit the sand and ploughed across the desert floor at breakneck speed. Its pilot yelled aloud, a defiant shout of effort, holding the wildly skidding chariot steady, _don't flip don't flip don't flip don't don't don't—_

Until he came to a spinning, jerking, sick-making stop in the middle of nowhere.

The sky circled drunkenly overhead. A dark speck sailed high in the bottomless blue, and another. Carrion seekers wailed and ranted. Anakin's heart rate slowly, slowly settled. He took a breath. He was _alive._

Chucking the crash helmet aside, he clambered out of the battered chassis and looked around. The Black Hills stretched out a single ragged arm in this direction, encircling the westward rim of the world. To the other side, there was nothing but foreign valleys and hills of sand, endless sand. He swallowed a mouthful of sticky spit and licked his chapped lips. There was an emergency canteen of water tucked beneath the controls, and he quickly emptied it.

But that was all he had, by way of survival gear. Things didn't look too good for him.

Another scavenging creature appeared in the sky, calling to its mates, tracing a lazy circle over some unseen thing beyond the next dune. Probably a bantha that had expired of heat exhaustion. It happened, sometimes. The old and the weak did not linger long on Tatooine; life ended with the waning of strength, most often in violence.

He leaned against the wrecked pod and watched the spiraling progress of several sand vultures. They dipped and wheeled, soared and skimmed.. but did not descend. There was something _else_ down there, something fierce. He squinted up at the suns, beating their merciless double rhythm against his skin – heat and excoriating radiance, scorching the sand beneath his soft-wrap boots, hammering down upon his exposed head. Walls of liquid fire seemed to rise about him, waterfalls pouring upward into the ocean-blue vault.

Anakin had never seen an ocean, only sky – he imagined they were alike, both fathomless and wide, pulsing with their own secrets. The too-bright heavens yawned on all sides, inviting him to fall upward with the heat, beckoning him as speed sometimes did, _melting_ him into their own boundless expanse.

In that moment, when Anakin and sky and sun and wind were one thing, one heat-addled miasma, he _felt_ it, a strangely compelling current drawing him toward the _thing _ over that last dune-top. He reeled with the scavengers, stared with the suns, stumbled forward with the shuddering, hot breeze. He was drawn inward toward a dark center, a singular point of fascination, enmeshed in a snare like the hunting pit of a mighty sarlaac… slipping, slipping…

He whimpered in terror, but trudged on, obeying a power far beyond his ken, _needing_ to see, _needing_ to know –

-crawling on hands and knees past the crumbling apex of a dune, peering over its edge –

Oh no. He dropped to his belly, pressing himself against the burning sand, staring in appalled silence at the hellish spectacle below.

This was _not good._

* * *

Cliegg found her beneath the stadium's outer wall, speaking with one of the toothless market vendors who plied honey-breads and other local delicacies. The sight of her – clad in fraying and faded garments, her hair bound back in a simple knot, her skin freckled and lined, her hands calloused and bony – set his pulse to racing, closed his throat with a strange and melting emotion.

"Shmi," he choked out. "Shmi. Darling."

Weary eyes turned upward to him, despair written in patient depths. A bittersweet smile fluttered across her face and dissolved in the desert's heat.

But Cliegg grasped both her hands between his. "Shmi," he breathed. The words stuck in his throat, their meaning so momentous, so pregnant with unspeakable bliss, that he could barely force them out. "You – you are free. I've … Watto sold you. And , and, …" his hand fumbled in an interior pocket. Shaking, he withdrew the transmitter box, the wicked device linked to a hidden implant in her body. "This piece of…." He clenched his jaw, blinked away moisture from his inexplicably burning eyes. The transmitter box clattered to the trampled earth and was crushed beneath his boot, its delicate innards spilling onto the dust in a heap of sparking wire and circuitry.

Shmi gasped, hand pressed against her heart.

A second transmitter met the same fate. Cliegg ground it beneath his heel. "And that's your boy, too. Both of you, darling. Free."

"But…. How? How…..?" the poor woman stammered.

He hemmed and hawed, shifting on the spot. But now – now he owed her complete honesty. Nothing would come between them ever again. He swore it before all the divine powers he didn't believe in. "I bet my life savings on Anakin," he confessed.

"Cliegg!" Shmi's exclamation was almost a rebuke. "Your whole savings! Oh…. That was brash, foolish…" Her tirade broke off as realization sank in, as invisible shackles fell from her wrists and neck. "I, I… I have no way to thank you…. I cannot….."

He dropped to one knee, the way they did in Core world holo-dramas. A few passers-by flicked him a curious glance, but bustled on without stopping. The suns stayed in their courses, glaring in astonishment. "Shmi Skywalker," the moisture farmer rasped out. "Grant this humble man a share of happiness he does not deserve … and consent to be my wife."

She was in his arms the next moment, sobbing in unison with him, her weight a quivering bundle of warmth, of comfort, of earth and sky and _water,_ pouring rain, monsoon buckets and buckets of inestimable wealth, limitless grace. He hauled her to her feet, running leathery hands through her silver-fretted curls.

"What about Ani?" she hiccupped, wilting against him. "Master Jinn went to find him.. I don't know where he is…"

Lars gripped her hand in his own. "I've got my speeder. Let's go."

* * *

The boy was not difficult to track – his progress across the barren desert left a luminous comet-tail thorugh the plenum, a flawless imprint he could follow like a shooting star.

Qui-Gon powered the gravbike to maximum and shot out into the oven-blast of Tatooine's midafternoon. As the settlement and its celebratory intoxication fell behind, the deafening clamor in the Force faded into more insidious roaring, a subliminal thunder like that of a vast cataract. He opened his senses further, questing for the source of this new disturbance, and then caught his breath.

Ahead, in the same direction Anakin seemed to be fleeing, a churning _pit_ yawned wide, a black hole in the universal energy, a nexus about which life and light warped, toward which they fell, tipping over the event horizon into nameless oblivion. To him, attuned as he was to the Living Force, it manifested itself as a pulsing, throbbing _heart._ A hunger compacted into flesh, a flame cloaked in muscle and sinew, a mind _burning_ with lusts no being should feel, with passions too grandiose, too perverse, too…. Dark.

The Sith.

He slowed a trifle, risked taking one hand from the steering bar. His comlink showed only the weakest signal capacity, but he tried anyway. _Obi-Wan… where are you? Pick up, blast it._

No answer.

He shoved the useless device back in its pouch with a muffled curse and sped onward. Alone or not, he _must_ prevent Anakin from falling into the creature's grasp. That was _all _that mattered, the absolute crux of existence in this time and place, this singular vergence in the galaxy's unfolding destiny.

The Dark was reaching for the boy, this unique and _dangerous_ child, this conundrum and contradiction in terms. The Dark was _here,_ in the form of a surreal, demonic servant – and it fell upon him, oath-bound servant of Light, to stand against it.

At any cost.

* * *

Outside the caves, Obi-Wan stumbled blindly in a sea of overwhelming light.

Squinting hard, eyes shaded with one hand, he strained to make out the silhouettes and blurs directly before him. The two suns melted the world into a marbleized smear, colors and shapes running together in radiance so intense it _hurt._

Straight ahead, his smarting eyes traced the outline of a mangled wreck… a _starship _ smashed flat like a grain-cake, the hull crushed and crumpled like a paper lantern, fuel core a blackened mass of slag, viewports and bulkheads shattered upon the sand like festival confetti. He blinked and stared. What in stars' name…..?

Distantly, a sand crawler shrank into a wavering speck on the horizon. He wiped a fresh sheening of sweat from his face with one wide sleeve and exhaled, slowly. The Jawas had exacted their vengeance… and Torbb her _justice._ He was free to return to Coruscant, there to face the Council's censure, and interrogation. It had been an _eternity_ since he'd set foot in the Temple, a sixmonth like few others, encompassing turmoil and upheaval, unwelcome discovery and the near-loss of two dear friends.

His thoughts strayed to Garen, and Feld, unleashing a flood of renewed anxiety, one swiftly dammed by iron discipline.

They needed to leave this dustball, with or without Qui-Gon's newest pathetic life form. The recently discovered presence of his SIth stalker gnawed a small hole of worry in his psychic bulwarks – would the creature make some dramatic final gesture, attempt to impede their departure? Perhaps they _should _take the boy with them, for his own sake… which would certainly require some additional _negotiation._ The sooner they concluded this affair the better. He fished his comlink out of its pouch and tried to raise the Jedi master – to no avail.

Tatooine's comm infrastructure was as reliable as its yearly rainfall. It was just Qui-Gon's sort of place: completely uncivilized. Still, a Jedi did not _depend _ upon technology, though he might use it. He closed his eyes, blocking out the steady lamentation in the Force, the quiet susurration of Torbb's grief. The matter was personal to her, and one she would have to bring before the Council in due time, to what consequence he could not say. It was not his place to pass down judgment, nor to guess at a fellow Jedi's motives and machinations.

He allowed his mind to unfurl into the desert waste, this place where the Force rang clear and true, a tympanum note of ….

He frowned, a deep furrow appearing between contracted brows.

_Qui-Gon?_

Something was amiss, the invisible currents disturbed. He could sense the Jedi master's perturbation clearly, a sharp dissonance raking across his own nerves, a cold pit wrenching at his own gut. He sank to his knees, blotting out the glare of the suns – visible even behind tightly shuttered eyelids – the buffeting heat of the sands, the vertiginous sky.

_Qui-Gon!_

But there was only that lingering, pervasive sense of _wrongness,_ of nightmare made real, of a pit opening at their feet, ready to swallow them whole. _Danger danger danger danger danger_ beat his heart. _ Go. Go. Go now._

The desert chimed with a ringing silence, an indrawn breath shaped into soundless syllables by wraithlike whispers, by ghastly echoes of a bygone war. _Korah. Matah. Yoodah._

He sprang to his feet, casting out for a vehicle – any vehcicle at all besides the plodding eopie. An overturned gravsled lay half-buried in a sand drift a few meters away, a victim of the frantic melee outside the caves. He heaved it onto its side, kicked the compensators into life, blew a cloud of grit out the intakes and revved the sputtering conveyance into life.

_Hold on, Master. Wait for me._


	21. Chapter 21

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 21**

Anakin was no tender naïf when it came to death; he'd seen plenty and more in his eight and three-quarters short years. He'd witnessed animals and people drop dead of heat exhaustion in the gutters, seen a guy get blown away in a blaster-fight at Flaky's Cantina, watched Sebulba the Dug _skewer_ another guy with a shiv, right in the marketplace. He'd observed podraces in which more than one contestant had ended as a charred mass of bone and blackened blood. And there was that runaway slave last month, the one whose spattered brains had – reputedly- been discovered on all four corners of the property. Not that Anakin had _personally_ been there, but still. When he was really little, one of Gardulla the Hutt's slaves had staged a short-lived insurrection and been whipped to death in the public courtyard. Watto's uncle Schmatto had been felled by a massive coronary a few years back, in the middle of the shop. He'd been in high dudgeon, screaming at his nephew about some business deal gone wrong, when his apoplectic fit turned into something worse. Anakin hadn't even blinked. Shmi had been _perturbed_ by her son's lack of emotive response, but that was Mom all over.

Always sweating the small stuff.

_This_grisly spectacle, however, he recognized as death on another _scale. _ It wasn't just the swift and brutal extinction of life to which by now he was utterly inured. The desecrated corpses of Tusken warriors, the gore-beribboned skeleton of the krayt dragon, the pathetic heaps of flesh that might have been animals or maybe _people _before the teeming scavengers had arrived: this obscene collage was more than a stark fact of nature. This was a twisted artistry, wrought upon the desert's bleak canvas by a hand and mind saturated in something far more terrifying than mere death. Anakin didn't have a word for what this might be, but it resonated within him with an awful clarity, forming a heavy pit in his gut, rousing hairs at the back of his neck. It was as though death was a mere glyph, its various forms but the diverse shapes of a foul language, one speaking of _emptiness._ _Hunger. Domination. Despair. Hatred. _

He shivered despite the day's pummeling heat, wriggling down further into the duneside, instinctively attenuating his _presence, _shrinking himself to a grain of sand. The words of this new tongue echoed harshly in his blood, even when he clamped hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes tight. _Korah. Ratah-mah. Yoodah. Korah._

The most powerful thing in the universe was a black hole, because it could _eat_ everything, even Light.

_Power. Power. Power,_ his heart drummed.

What if something could swallow a black hole, though? What if someone could _outrace_ a black hole and win? What if someone could _fight_ a black hole and win, like with a laser sword, blue lightning cleaving through festering blackness, spilling its guts, emptying it of emptiness, forcing it to regurgitate all that it had so wantonly consumed?

_Power against Power. Strength against strength. Salvation._

He looked up, a new and shuddering boldness seizing his limbs, eyes squinting hard in the blinding white glare. And there he was, the _author _of this ruinous scene. It was _him- _ the bad guy, the one who had grabbed him before and almost kidnapped him, run away with him in the desert . Anakin's blood ran cold, then hot again: the black-mantled figure was pacing back and forth, back and forth, in front of a squalid cluster of prisoners – moisture farmers, by the look of them, a pathetic clutch of supplicants, kneeling and groveling at the monster's feet while he calmly prowled before them, the hilt of his laser sword in one gloved hand.

The tattooed, horned guy going to kill them, too- Anakin just _knew_ it. But for now he was waiting, like a sarlacc coiled at the bottom of its hunting pit, not eating the small animals that wandered into its trap because it knew a larger prey would thereby be lured into its clutches.

Mister Qui-Gon sir had admonished him _repeatedly,_ and _sternly,_ not to venture out onto the desert alone, nor to seek out danger. But it wasn't like he'd _chosen_ to fly all the way out here into the boondocks, nor to crash right on the cusp of disaster. And Mister Qui-Gon himself was a Jedi. He went around the galaxy helping people. Saving people. Prob'ly blitzing evil guys with his laser sword. And Anakin might not be a Jedi…. but he'd been sort of unofficially invited to Jedi school, which had to count for something. _And,_ he was the only human and youngest ever Boonta Eve Classic podracing champion.

So basically, he could do _anything._

And Mom always said that true courage was doing the right thing even when you were so scared you wanted to wet your pants. Not that Shmi put it in those exact terms, but that was the gist of her sentiment. Today, Anakin was not only going to free his beloved mother, he was going to make her proud. He was gonna be like the Jedi, and save the day. He cast about, frantically scouring his surroundings for something that might _help_ him achieve his lofty ambition. There weren't any stray weapons or much else, but the farmers had arrived here in a bevy of assorted vehicles: swoops, speeders, a couple rickety gravsleds. One smaller repulsor-bike leaned drunkenly in the sand a handful of meters away, on Anakin's side of the dune.

He might be able to use it…

The prisoners had plenty of ways to escape, if their overconfident guard were otherwise occupied. They just needed a window of _time. _ A distraction. He could _totally_ handle that.

* * *

The thunder in the Force deepened gradually to a roaring cataract, the unruly conjunction of disparate rivers; silt-laden murk churned into clear-running waters, and then crashed tumultuously into a burbling upsurge, powerful and untried. What had been stained currents now frothed and seethed with chaotic white foam, the violent rapids of a flood without containing banks, a wild directionless _torrent_ plunging recklessly toward the cliff-edge of fate, plummeting headlong toward a fathomless drop into the future.

Qui-Gon gritted his teeth and powered onward, accelerating _with_ the rushing current, riding destiny's waves, his blood rushing along the same breathtaking course toward the same inevitable end.

_Go, go,go,go…_

He crested the last sun-bleached rise and hurtled down the dune's far side, eyes widening at the _blasphemy_ scrawled across crimson-soaked sand. Strewn like bloody offerings upon a savage altar, bodies littered the desert floor in a wide swath about the derelict corpse of a krayt lizard. The Jedi master's fleeting glance encompassed severed heads, burn-scored bodies, skulls and jutting bones, everywhere the bell-toll of agonized death, the last clawing scars engraved upon the Force by voice after voice, every one of them abruptly silenced.

In the heart of this dark sanctuary throbbed a black and vile cancer, a thing clothed in night and alight with a dark nimbus, a face masked by harsh lines, crowned in a hellish circlet of spikes, bejeweled with lurid yellow lamps. The Force billowed about this figure, inked and turgid, full of twisting _power._ His heart leapt in alarm, in recognition.

_Sith._

Impossible.

But there was no time to reflect, no time to _hesitate. _ Behind the demon cowered a knot of panicked innocents, farmers young and old, men brought to their knees and desperation by a foe utterly, absurdly beyond their power of comprehension, their feeble means of defense. And – like the thundering river, the white rapids of destiny – hurtling toward this enemy on a corroded dust-bike, young Anakin. The boy streaked straight for the cloaked Sith, his hacked-together swoops' drives shrieking like twin banshees, his tiny fist upraised in defiance.

"Run!" he hollered at the appalled farmers, and plowed straight into his opponent.

Three things happened simultaneously: the tattooed warrior flipped out of the way with effortless grace; the stricken prisoners scattered like startled lizards, skittering over the sand in all directions, pure fear driving them before a gale-wind; Qui-Gon launched himself from his own swoop and landed a mere meter from the Sith, 'saber blazing into life as he fell.

"Anakin! _Get away from here!"_ he barked, already sweeping his emerald blade up to block the first ruthless strike.

He could not see whether his injunction was obeyed, for the fight absorbed every particle of his focus. This foe was _young,_ arrogant in his strength, in the deadly precision of his form, of his speed—

The Jedi master leapt away from an off-speed decapitating blow and regrouped. _Two blades._ He sucked in a breath, summoning abundant Light to his aid, eyes narrowing as the Sith spun his double weapon in a taunting circle, a blazing disc of crimson howling a single deep note into the hollow heaven s above. Scavenging birds wheeled and cried, caught in an updraft of wind and heat.

The thing was well trained in the Jedi arts. In the ways of the Force. Except…

They clashed again, striving to land a severing strike, a scorching deathblow to neck or torso, blades spitting and screaming luminous arcs about them, grazing the sand, the krayt's jutting bones, setting the very air between them alight with actinic wrath.

"Old fool," the Zabrak hissed, blackened lips curving in a leer.

"Mister Qui-Gon!" a shrill voice called, from the sidelines.

The Jedi master's heart skipped another beat. _No!_ "Anakin!" he panted, blocking and pivoting, strike and reverse, cut and parry, twist, strike, block – "Go! Now!"

The Sith's triumphant sneer widened, even as they locked blades and scowled at one another across the sparking, hot-bright barrier, red and green 'sabers chorusing in exquisite dissonance _Korah Matah Yoodah Ratah-Mah –_

The Force exploded into a meteoric fountain, a dark rainfall. With a flick of his wrist, the Zabrak warrior raised the abandoned swoop and hurled it at the boy, a swift and deadly projectile.

Qui-Gon parried a hard downward strike on his right, raised his free hand and diverted the careening hunk of metal in mid-air, sending it crashing into the krayt's skull.

Anakin yelled, blue eyes widening to saucers.

The Sith slammed a boot full in his opponent's jaw, seizing the momentary distraction and hammering the tall man to the ground.

"Noooooo!" the child screamed.

A pulsing red beam throbbed angrily at the Jedi master's throat, its sparking heat like a steady drip of blood, like the solemn beat of a dirge. One foot casually slammed into Qui-Gon's wrist, sending his 'saber skidding. It flew into the Zabrak's outstretched hand.

Anakin launched himself bodily at the conqueror, only to crash into an invisible wall and sprawl helplessly in the sand. His hands went to his throat, gasping for air.

"Obey, or he dies," the Sith rasped.

"Let the boy go. He is of no interest to you," the Jedi master asserted, bringing the Force to bear upon his enemy's mind. The words were repelled by shields like polished obsidian, walls of impenetrable rage. A heavy black boot connected with his ribs, robbing him of breath.

Anakin writhed, face splotching, chest spasming futilely.

Qui-Gon summoned the Force and _–_

Yelled as a livid line of fire traced itself down his side, from clavicle to flank and over one thigh, a sinuous brand of displeasure.

"Die, Jedi." A hand fisted itself in his hair, hauled him upright onto his knees. The hilt of a 'saber pressed close beneath his vertebrae, promising instant obliteration, threatening to impale him on a shaft of blazing vengeance.

Anakin collapsed, sucking in a sobbing breath, hands clenching in the scalding sand. He raised bloodshot eyes to his captor, horror and rage scudding over his youthful features as he beheld the plight of his friend and would-be savior.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, reaching for the tattered, strife-torn Force, for the bleeding scraps of Light shimmering elusively about him, a diaphanous polar aurora, gashed and burning like his flesh, like the tapestry of Tatooine's arid wastes. Why had the boy not _obeyed?_

The grip on his hair tightened, pulling his head back and baring his throat. The weapon's hilt behind him shoved harder against his ribs, promising annihilation. Execution. Defeat.

There is no death. There is the Force.

But the _boy…._ !

"I am your master now," the Sith informed the panting, shivering child.

"Don't kill him! Please!" Anakin begged.

"Silence, whelp!" An invisible whipstrike sent the miscreant slamming backward, clutching his solar plexus, grunting in pain.

The Zabrak's fetid breath wafted hot against Qui-GOn's ear. "Do you feel it, Jedi? Now is the reckoning. He is coming, isn't he?_"_ A thrill of sheerest lust, of strange and melting _hate,_ churned darkly in the Force's deepest nexus. "He is coming to me now. He is _mine."_

Dread clawed cold fingers across the Jedi master's clouding, pain-wracked senses. For here, and now, in the present moment, the white frenzy in the Force, fate's cruel deluvia, reached a crescendo of deafening, obliterating intensity. The world itself seemed to contract and collide into a singularity, a tidal wave crashing down, down upon all their heads, tipping the galaxy over that last fateful chasm-edge, into the abyss of the future. The sky spun, the Force roared, the vergence climaxed in this _one_ chosen arena, this graveyard, this slaughtering ground, this cataclysmic meeting place.

Obi-Wan appeared at the crest of the last dune, both weeping suns glittering in a double nimbus behind him.


	22. Chapter 22

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 22**

The galaxy stood still upon its occult axis, stars and starstuff skirling out into wisping pennants of astonishment, constellations jumbled into skewed parodies of themselves, the dark void shattering, falling through the atmosphere's bright, illusory panes in jagged shards, heaven descending in broken fragments.

Silently. Slowly.

The Force itself choked on his next breath, heart stopping blood freezing spine melting _denial._

Silence.

The _thing- _ the Enemy, the Other, the perverse mockery of all he held dear and true…. The _Sith - _ this foul _excrescence_ vomited from the bilious depths of hell, stood gloating triumphantly behind _Qui-Gon,_ one hand twisted cruelly in the Jedi master's hair, the other hidden from sight but obviously holding a lightsaber's hilt against the prisoner's ribcage.

A single flick of one finger, a single _twitch…_

Obi-Wan remembered to breathe. Sheer horrified disbelief wrung a sharp gasp from his lips. He halted, paralyzed, upon the summit of the dune, the marred slopes of sand spreading before him , scarred and littered with bodies, with death, the exsanguinated corpse of the past, the present. The violence splayed here for his benefit, for his revulsion, was but salt thrown upon a flayed-open wound, sundry insults added to an injurious, fatal strike.

Blackness edged his vision, a prodigious suffocating pressure closed about his chest, built behind his temples, in his aching throat. _Qui-Gon. _

And then the thing dared to _speak_ to him, chin tilted jauntily, eyes flashing. "What you _feel," _ the foul wretch informed him – smugly, patronizingly – "is _fear."_

_Fear leads to anger, anger to hate, hate to suffering Beware the Dark Side, Jedi. _ The young Knight slammed mental shields into place, a reflexive and triple-forged barrier between himself and this bloated monstrosity of ego and sadism… but the thing's oily presence penetrated despite his most strident effort, decades of habit, worming through fissures he had not felt until that moment, oozing like sludge between the scabbed over edges of past trauma. The Sith's lurid, horn-crowned face seemed to morph into that of countless others: Zan Arbor, Xanatos, Sifo Dyas, nameless hordes of foes and traitors. Bodiless flames ringed him, rose off the sand in adulation, obeisant to their dark master's command.

With a terrible effort he wrenched his attention off the Sith's mocking visage, and met Qui-Gon's azure gaze. The Jedi master was supremely collected, placid as a meditation fountain amid the Temple's gardens. His eyes held those of his former student for a long moment, then slid sideways.

Obi-Wan had not even _seen_ the third party to this encounter. Anakin Skywalker crouched nearby, tears etching pallid grooves through the thick layer of dust coating his cheeks and chin. The Force shimmered, delicately, bespeaking the invisible thralldom of this second hostage, this shatterpoint in the present balance of power.

Qui-Gon's gentle promptings buffeted his mind, thrumming along a bond reinforced by years of shared joy and pain. _It's too late. Save the boy._

A swell of indignation, of _rebellion_ against the stark choice, against the terms of ultimatum, rose within him. No. Not like this. Not by his _will,_ by his _decree,_ like some checkmate gambit in dejarik. Never like this.

"Mister Obi-Wan!" Anakin called out. "Do something! "

Trembling, he chafed against the stalemate holding him inexorably in place. Qui-Gon's wordless urging hammered against his shields, now. _You can only save one. Take the boy back to Coruscant. Hear me, Obi-Wan._

He shook his head, slightly, heart driving against his own ribs in rhythm with the soundless chanting in the plenum. _Korah. Matah. Yoodah. Ratah-mah._

The tall man's brows contracted, the slightest echo of an authoritative scowl.

"Beg," the Sith commanded, licking his lips in delectation. "Beg for your master's life, Jedi. Abase yourself before me."

* * *

The Watcher shivered in anticipation, in delight, as his Chosen sank slowly to one knee, head dipping in the most resentful suggestion of obeisance possible. A frayed and faded garment was his only adornment beyond a thick fall of reddish hair, a youthful ornament theZabrak could only observe with contempt. The hot wind picked at the duster's folds, whipped strands of auburn about the Jedi's sweat-sheened face. A pair of untamed, smoldering eyes bored into him , spitting defiance.

" _Abase_ yourself!" he bellowed, cruelly yanking his captives' head to one side.

The young Jedi bared his teeth, a feral beast too proud to cringe at the whip's touch, too spirited to be broken by any but its true master. He lowered his forehead to the burning sand in a full kowtow, every line of his posture radiating _rebellion,_ redolent of the most exquisite distillation of _attachment. _ The weakness was a gaping hole in adamantine armor, a _delicious _ vulnerability.

The Watcher trembled in unison with his victim, panting slightly in the excoriating heat. Two suns sank upon the horizon, slowly immolated upon the planet's hearth, molten golds running together into a monumental idol, a hecatomb of liquid fire.

"Call me _master_," he cajoled his Chosen, the words silken, a caress softer than any lover's touch.

So close.

The Jedi stiffened, head snapping up. The suns' ire sparked about him, glinting off every crease and fold of white cloth, gilding his unruly hair. "You are master of _nothing,"_ he snarled. "The Dark is utter enslavement, not power."

The Watcher leaned forward, over the older Jedi's shoulder. "What you _feel:_ it is called _anger."_

"I do not know anger!"

But the repudiation rang hollow. He did know anger. He was alflame with it, with intoxicating dread, with the rarefied fury of protective fear, the sweet-sick yearnings engendered by _love,_ by base attachment. Vulnerable, the Chosen one recoiled when his shields were touched, shuddered when his defenses were _assailed- gently, so gently, so urgently…_

"Hate," the Watcher murmured, nostrils flaring, blood pounding in his veins. So close, so close… he had the demanded prize here, in his hand – the Child precious to his master, the command laid upon him. And better still, imminent victory, the utter _violation_ of his Chosen foe. They teetered upon the brink of seduction, of _ecstasy._ "Hate. Feel it. Embrace it."

"No," the Jedi insisted, anguish softening the word to a moan.

"No," the Jedi master whispered.

"No!" the Child wailed.

"_Yes,"_ the Watcher groaned, _thrusting_ the crimson blade clean through his prisoner's chest. The 'saber shot straight from its hilt, impaling the Jedi master upon a millenium's burning hatred, drawing from his rigid body a silent scream of agony.

"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" his young counterpart screamed, shields instantly decimated, dams broken, resistance shattered.

And in that moment, the Watcher knew bliss, felt the fatal shaft drive hard into two hearts, skewering his enemy to the very core, to the sanctum of his being, an inviolate temple of light soiled and desecrated in one fell strike.

The Jedi master crumpled forward, body pierced and smoldering; the Watcher's blade swept up in triumphant pride; the victim of his long labors _fell_ upon him in a blazing fury, 'saber still howling that same boundless cry of pain and loss.

And they were joined, in battle, in heat, in passion.

* * *

Anakin felt the incorporeal vise about his limbs loosen in the same instant that the fell creature and Obi-Wan's blades slammed together with a dissonant shriek of crimson and blue fire. He tumbled forward onto hands and knees, sucking in great lungfuls of bitter, grit-laden air, gulping down the desert's consuming heat until his insides were smoldering with it.

Through blearing eyes he beheld a combat more ferocious than any krayt dragon's territorial dispute; the clashing warriors spun and leapt, whirled and drove against each other with a speed and abandon that made even him dizzy. Raw _power _rolled off them in unsteady waves: pain, hunger, rage, need – these blended into a miasma about them, a halo in which sand and sky were snared. Twisting columns of sand rose about their boots, whipped around them in angry comet-trails; moisture precipitated where the plasma blades cleaved the air; the desert floor was scarred with trails of liquid glass where a 'saber nicked its surface, rivulets of molten angush.

The weapons sang an awful canticle of strife, a pair of hammers showering down vivid embers where they struck, the twin screams of thranctills plunging from on high. The evil guy, the black cloaked one, swung one foot so high it almost caught the Jedi in his chin; a tight backflip carried the target away from the strike, with a yell of intense _fury._

Fire raged within the spectator. Fire and fear, intoxicating.

Mister Qui-Gon sir was _…. Really, really hurt. _ He could die. But nobody could kill a Jedi, could they? Could they? he flinched when a severed chunk of krayt bone landed just beside him, blackened at one end where a laser sword had cut clean through it. And then he stood, grasping the improvised weapon in one small hand, the desert itself erupting within him, liquefying beneath the twin suns of wrath and sorrow.

Now the opponents moved so fast he could not see their separate movements, distinguish one blazing arc of fire from another. They were locked in a frenzied contest of speed, power, skill, _passion, burning passion –_

And then they grappled, bodies locked and struggling, faces contorted in a mutual snarl. The Zabrak roared, and slammed his horned head _smack_ into Obi-Wan's face; the latter person stumbled back, but in his _left_ hand he had another 'saber hilt, Mister Qui-Gon's weapon, and then –

Anakin yelped in astonishment, for now there were four blades carving the twilight into bloody tatters – two scarlet, an emerald and a blue. Their cacophony filed the desert to overflowing, echoed back off the Black Hills, cast angry radiance over the krayt's leering skull, churned the onrushing night into apocalyptic fireworks. Dust rose in a storm about the battle, encircling it, veiling it. Anakin crept nearer, heart pounding to a compelling chorus – _Korah Matah Yoodah Korah!_

The Zabrak wheeled now, facing him; and he _threw_ his piece of bone, not only with his arm but with every fiber of his being. It hit the tattooed warrior full in the jaw, snapping his head back and eliciting a howl of surprise.

And in that instant, Mister Obi-Wan struck, the green blade sweeping wide to knock his foe's 'saber clear, the _blue_ one whipping down and around, adder-like, to _chop_ his enemy's sword-hand off at the wrist!

The Zabrak roared in agony and twisted to one side, face a jagged gargoylish mask of rage – and then he took a boot to the head, rolled backward, and ended with Mister Obi-Wan standing over him, one foot pressed hard against his jugular, the sapphire blade thrumming hot just between his eyes.

_Whoa._ Anakin panted, riveted to the spot, unable to draw his eyes away. Would a 'saber burn straight through a skull, melt the brain within, burn out the eye sockets and sizzle the flesh to blackened ash? Bile rose in his throat, his stomach flipped queasily, and yet he could not look away.

The Zabrak laughed, and laughed. "_Hate, " _ he gasped, pain serrating the syllable, "This is _hate. _ I have _won."_

Mister Obi-Wan's face was a mess: blood ran freely from his forehead, where the Zabrak had head-butted him; sweat sheened his skin, making him look ghostly and waxen in the reflected fire of the 'sabers; his teeth were bared like a cornered beast, his eyes wide and red-rimmed.

Anakin cringed, entranced. _Just kill him, kill him please please please end it…_

And then the Jedi did the most _choobazzi_ ridiculous stupid thing. He _threw his_ own laser swords away. They landed in the sand behind Anakin, thumping into the dust, _thwack thwack._ And then he stepped backward, shaking like he was in shock or something, his breath coming in heaving gasps.

The Zabrak clutched his arm, the place where the cloth and flesh glowed red-orange, and his yellow eyes goggled, his lips contracted about his crooked teeth. He spat between them, a sibilant curse, and he rolled to his feet, also panting, weaving where he stood like he was about to pass out.

Anakin heard the whine of a speeder's drive, and hollered aloud. Mister Obi-Wan ducked, faster than thought, and the first blaster rifle shot winged so close to the Zabrak's head it might have clipped a horn.

"Farkin' son of a whore!" a harsh voice shouted, as the speeder with its four passengers careened by. More rifle shots peppered the air, indiscriminately aimed, badly off mark. A body slammed into Anakin's and pinned him against the sand, protectively.

"Stay down," Mister Obi-Wan hissed in his ear.

The sound of a speeder's repulsors whizzed by overhead - a strafing run made by the monster's former indignant victims. Rifle blasts exploded in the sand, sending up spouts of grit. The machine circled and came back again, its pilot unleashing a steady string of imprecation.

"Whooooooooop! That's right you whoreson vetch! Run!" the moisture farmers bellowed as they passed again, and headed into the open wastes.

Anakin pushed the heavy weight off him. "Hey! Hey! Where's that guy? What happened?"

"…He fled," the Jedi answered, kneeling there in the sand, looking white as the mighty lizard's bleached bones. He looked ill, sick and weary, and something worse. Much worse.

Anakin squinted into the rapidly deepening dusk. The higher whine of a swoop could be heard over the speeder's rumbling drive. "They won't catch him," he decided.

Obi-Wan shook his head, eyes closed. "No," he agreed, breathlessly. He struggled to his feet, and stumbled across the beaten sands to the place where the Jedi master lay, deathly still, in a crumpled heap.

Anakin followed, magnetically drawn to the scene of disaster, eyes wide.

The young Jedi dropped to his knees, and tenderly rolled his mentor over, one arm supporting the wounded man's head, one trembling badly as it hovered above the awful, smoldering gash in his chest, the blackened crater where a 'saber had pierced through and through.

"….Qui-Gon," he choked, voice breaking.


	23. Chapter 23

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 23**

Night fell.

And beneath its softly descending shroud, Qui-Gon Jinn lay dying. Obi-Wan cradled the tall man's head, oblivious to his solitary witness, to the carnage strewn about them, to the grotesque sculpture of the krayt's bones, to the prurient moons peeking over the Black Hills' crenellated peaks. The Force's subtle chiming jangled into discord, into pain-fraught dissonance, raking over nerves and binding two into one, translating the gaping hole in the Jedi master's chest into a shared torment, a black hole into which rushed strength and wisdom and joy – never to return.

Once-strong fingers clutched urgently at the younger man's sleeve, twisting feebly in the grimy cloth. "..You…." The syllables rasped past a throat raw with unshed screams. "..You ….did not….?"

Obi-Wan shook his head. "No. No, Master."

Relief briefly eclipsed the grimace of pain upon Qui-Gon 's face. Head lolling, he managed the thinnest of smiles. "…Good boy."

Such evocation of another time, another reality, brought a peculiar ache; jaw and throat aching, Obi-Wan merely nodded, strengthening his futile, protective grip.

The Jedi master 's eyelids drooped, then dragged themselves open again, his peerless spirit fighting upstream against the inexorable tide of oblivion. He struggled to speak, but the effort proved too colossal.

The words were borne gravely by the Force instead, sharpened to desperate clarity by pain. _The boy. Promise me._

Another tight, frantic nod. _I will take him to the Temple. I will speak for him before the Council….. I promise… I –_

A gasp escaped them in unison as the first convulsion seized the tall man's frame, luminous spirit throwing off the ruined shackles of gross matter, writhing free of its mortal coil.

_Qui-Gon!_

Skin ashen, soaked in cold sweat, the dying man raised one hand, eyes glazed with emotion, and touched his friend, his student's face, one fingertip rasping delicately over a cheek wet with blood and salt tears. "…..Brat," he murmured, with his last failing breath.

Choking down a sob, Obi-Wan pressed his forehead against the Jedi master's , holding him close as the second, and the third racking convulsions shook the once-powerful body, as soul tore loose, by agonizing degrees, from its anchor and sanctuary, as -

Ice-vibrant intuition cascaded down his spine, galvanizing him to action. One hand fumbled in his belt pouch, fingers all but numb with dread, with terrible audacity. The _vitals blocker_ Torbb had recovered from Uticus' hoard – he found it, clumsily clipped the tiny cylinder into the emergency hypo in his med-kit. Other objects tumbled to the sand in his haste, as his hands shook with a strange palsy.

_There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force. _ He plunged the noxious, dangerous, unpredictable…. life-saving… elixir into Qui-Gon's jugular vein, and tossed aside the empty cartridge.

His heart stopped; his blood froze; the Force contracted to a single deafening point of nullity, an annihilating void sucking all things into itself, blackness nothingness-

Psyche bucking wildly, he thrashed free of the bond, of the yoke binding them together, and collapsed upon the hot sand, shuddering head to foot even as the Jedi master stilled into deathly silence beside him.

A few intrepid stars wheeled overhead, against a curtain of inky indigo. A pallid face, round and callow, appeared above him.

"Mister Obi-Wan?"

Speech came slowly. His teeth were chattering. "A—ana-kin."

The boy was weeping. "Mister Qui-Gon's dead."

He reached an arm out, brushed fingers against a stretch of cold bone and skin, the lifeless shell of a corpse. Not a corpse. "No…. he's not. He's…." there was no word for this, for the coagulation and cessation of energy that lay lumpen here beside him – a place where the Force did not flow, nor ebb, but merely stagnated, a perpetually disrupted melody, a coda extending into impossible minutes. "…suspended."

Anakin frowned, swiping a sleeve across his own face. A sticky detritus still clung to one tiny nostril. He sniffed heartily. "What did you do?"

He sat up, the warm breeze knifing through him like frigid blades. "I don't know." his voice was rough, sounding unfamiliar in his own ears.

"What do you mean suspended?"

"I don't know."

"But what's gonna happen?" the child insisted, demanding the security of a concrete answer.

Exhausted, stunned, he shook his head. "I don't know."

Dissatisfied, shaken to the core, Anakin drew closer, gnawing at his lower lip, arms hugging his slender frame. "I'm scared."

_I'm scared too._ He shook his head, yet again. _Fear is a path to the Dark Side._ "Don't be," he advised, gently.

The boy edged closer, mutely pleading for… something. Reassurance. Comfort.

_There is no death. No fear. No passion. _ If the boy was to dwell among Jedi, then he must understand. "Anakin: you must not –"

But before he could impart his feeble admonition, the child had thrown himself into his arms and was sobbing violently against his shoulder. Taken aback, too tired to object, he held the bundle of coarse cloth and quivering limbs, and tipped his face upward to the distant passionless skies, begging the Force to expunge the memory of this night, to scour the annals of history clean and somehow, miraculously, right this abominable, unfathomable _wrong._ And to hold him together long enough to make it back to Coruscant, to present a façade of dutiful competency.

He dared not _feel_ this moment any longer. If he did, he might fall.

Anakin was screaming loud enough for both of them, anyway.

* * *

Torbb Bakk'ile was the first to arrive in the scene. The Republic shuttle set down a stone's throw away, its open ramp casting a ghastly beam of radiance across the dark sand, silhouetting the vast Knight in blinding light. Her deep umber cassock swirled as she descended, topknot cascading over one broad shoulder, black synthleather tabards accentuating heavy musculature and a more than generous bosom.

"Hells' moons, Kenobi!" she bellowed, forthright as ever, "Nice way to skip the scene without a word! I had to _walk_ a klick and a half to find –"

Her tirade abruptly cut off as her gaze lighted upon Qui-Gon's intert form. Three strides brought her to the site of disaster, eyes roving over the littered bodies and the krayt skeleton. "Fierfek," she breathed, dropping slowly to one knee beside her fallen colleague. "By the Force….."

"A Sith warrior," Obi-Wan tersely explained.

Torbb's dark eyes widened as she glanced up at him. One enormous hand gripped his shoulder, fingers digging in painfully. "I'm sorry, brother. Are you at peace?"

There was no use in prevarication. He shook his head.

She squeezed harder, eliciting a wince. "I am sorry." Then, to Anakin, "Who in stars' name are _you?"_

"I'm, uh, Anakin," the boy replied, goggling at the newcomer. He tugged on Obi-Wan's sleeve, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "IS she a Jedi too?"

"Meet Jedi Knight Torbb Bakk'ile, he made the requisite introduction.

"I'll get the hovergurney," the pragmatic newcomer announced. She stood, scowling ferociously. "The sooner we're off this hell-forsaken dustball the better." Her long stride carried her back up the ship's ramp in a swirl of dark cloth.

Anakin swallowed. "'You're gonna leave now?"

"We must." Obi-Wan braced himself. "And you will have to accompany us. That creature…"

"The evil guy."

"Yes. He wants to take you, Anakin. You won't be safe anywhere but in the Temple."

The boy nodded, solemnly. "It's okay," he decided. "I'm free now. Or I will be, 'cause I won the race and I've got lots of money!. And Mom is coming with us, right?"

Drawing a hand over his face, the young Jedi groaned inwardly. The boy's mother. Yes – they would have to address that issue. "We will have to find her before we depart." There was absolutely no protocol relevant to this situation, no precedent upon which to rely. But he was fairly certain that a _living person_ could not and should not be wantonly uprooted and transplanted into Qui-Gon's figurative botanical specimen collection, simply as a means of pandering to a deep rooted dependency.

On the other hand, who was he to lecture anyone on the dangers of _attachment?_

"Are we all gonna fly in a starship?" the boy prattled. "All the way to the Core? Mom will love that!"

Torbb returned at that moment, sparing him the trouble of making reply. Together, they lifted Qui-Gon's maimed body onto the palette and covered him with a thin thermal sheet. Beneath the pale covering, he appeared merely ill and asleep, a fever stricken shadow of himself, but not so obscenely _violated._ Obi-Wan watched, schooling himself into brutal impassivity, as the tall woman trundled the lifeless Jedi master back into the shuttle.

A speeder's tell-tale whine heralded another arrival: the belligerent moisture farmers returning from their unsuccessful pursuit. Shoving Anakin behind his back, Obi-Wan pivoted to face the new challenge, one hand resting upon his 'saber's hilt beneath the stained and filthy duster's folds.

The small craft hovered to a halt; its four riders clambered out, wielding rifles and glow-lamps, faces grooved with rage and fright, a manic edge to their presence. The youngest, a lad in his mid teens, leveled his blaster at the Jedi's face and paced forward menacingly.

Other vehicles thrummed to a stop in a wide circle, delivering reinforcements, and curious neighbors, the local ad-hoc sheriff, anyone who had heard the rumors, those who were drawn to violence as flies to honey. Faces gathered round, silent and staring, fingers pointing at the carnage, at the stranger standing in its midst.

"You!" the young farmer hollered, pacing within point blank range. "I don't know who in the hells you are, or _what_ you are.. but I saw you with that other _pizzmahi. _ You're one and the same thing, I reckon."

Obi-Wan stood his ground. "You are mistaken."

The appalled spectators murmured, gasped. The knot drew tighter, accusing voices a susurration of uncomprehending fear, of bloodlust.

The rifle-bearing youth bristled. "No, I don't think I am. Whatever freakish cult you belong to, whatever the _hells_ this all is supposed to mean, we don't want it and we won't take it!" He raised the weapon higher, taking aim.

"Put that down." A small gesture with one hand, a focused application of the Force…

The rifle wavered in its owner's hand.

"He's farking with your mind now, Owen!" a gruff voice shouted from the crowd's edge.

"Them's adepts of the Black Wizard, that's what they is! Git that child away from'im…. Molesters and murderers is what they all is!"

Owen snarled, and raised the blaster once more.

"Wait! Owen – stop!" A middle aged man stepped from the perimeter, weather beaten face deeply lined and unshaven. He held up a hand. "You're digging a well in a rock-slide. Put that damn rifle away. It's mine, anyhow. "

The youth gaped. "Da!"

Cliegg Lars shoved the weapon's barrel downward. It stayed pointing at the ground. "You all! Piss off… we got the wrong man. The one you want already got away."

Anakin bolted form behind Obi-Wan. "Mom! Mom!" He rushed into Shmi's extended arms, flinging both arms about her waist.

The posse dissolved and withdrew, muttering. Cliegg Lars stood arms akimbo, watching his neighbors disperse into their vehicles and slowly depart, one corroded swoop and speeder after another fading into the night.

"Mom! We're going to the Core, Mom! I a spaceship!"

Shmi lokoed over her son;s shoulder, thoroughly stymied.

Obi_Wan dipped his head respectfully. Jedi. Diplomat. He had a job to do, here. "Your son is in grave danger," he began.

"I understand that," the woman replied, stroking fingers thorugh Anakin's unruly hair. "I … I would do anything to keep him safe. Master Jinn already explained … a little."

Anakin stilled beneath her soothing touch. "We're going together," he proclaimed. "We're free now, or we will be – I'm gonna buuy us from Watto and then we can – "

"Ani. Ani," Shmi interrupted. She squatted down, bringing ther faces close. Her hands cradled his cheeks. "We are already free. Cliegg bet on you, Ani. He won enough to buy us both, and he has freed us. "

The child's mouth opened, then shut. He cast a furious scowl in the farmer's direction. "No!" he shouted. "No! That's not how it is! I won! I freed us! Not – "

"And I am going to marry him."

Silence. Anakin's lower lip trembled. "But you're coming with me."

Shmi's eyes glittered. Her lips twisted into a bittersweet smile. "Ani… my place is here. And yours.. yours is not. You were born for greater things. And now…. You must choose your path. "

Anakin drew back as though physically struck. Seething, shoulders hunched, he stared in disbelief. "You can't marry him! You have to be with me! I have to protect you! He can't take care of you, Mom! He's an idiot and he's _old _and -"

Shmi frowned, reaching out one hand in supplication. "Ani, don't be angry. I have my happiness, and knowing that you are safe will make it complete. Go, go and become what you are meant to be."

The boy sobbed, a piteous half-strangled sound. "Will I ever see you again?"

Lars wrapped an arm about his bride's shoulders.

"What does your heart tell you?" she asked her son.

Anakin hiccupped and sniffled. "Yes? No? Maybe?" he offered, miserably.

Shmi clasped Cliegg's hand, borrowing strength. "Go," she told her only child. "…And don't look back, Aankin. Don't look back."


	24. Chapter 24

**Legacy IV**

* * *

**Chapter 24**

The Watcher drove his ship up through Tatooine's blistered heavens, an inverted meteorite streaking back to the void above, seeking refuge in limitless hollow space.

He clutched the throbbing stump of his wrist against his chest, snarling as the pain wormed and writhed its way into bone and breath, every nerve ending pulsing with a livid fire. Agony gave him _strength - _ clarity. His hatred leapt and spun beneath the bellows of this insult, the indelible mark left upon his flesh. He yearned no longer; now he _possessed,_ he _owned_ the object of his obsession. Pain bound them together, a mutually bestowed gift, a pledge consummated in the loss of a hand, in the molten ruins of a Jedi master's chest.

He threw his head back, allowing the fire in his veins to _peak,_ to carry him close to the brink of unconsciousness. It thundered against his psyche like a black sea, and with each retreating tidal pulse, he was left scoured and pure, the smooth-washed sands of his hatred like virgin ash upon some volcanic shore. He had not yet _completed_ his task, his apotheosis to Lordship – but he had won the first skirmish, wooed and conquered his Chosen match..

He had tasted and scented _hate_ on the young Jedi, or something perilously near…. And he had pierced him to the core, a brand of ownership the victim would not soon forget. The contemplation of such vicarious agony ameliorated his own, eclipsed the rage bubbling in his blood. Victory was not peace but domination; triumph was his who struck the graver blow.

The barren world's thin mantle fell away beneath him; a crusted panoply of starlight beckoned. Fumbling the navcomp with his left hand, he punched in coordinates to the secret rendezvous his master had revealed to him but recently, the refuge in time of need. Licking his parched lips, he shivered at the thought of what punishment awaited him, groveling beneath those merciless boots. Imagination but tenuously skirted the edges of that inexorable wrath – even this obscure hint of things to come sent a chill of taut anticipation through his bowels. _Master_ was a name deplored, abjectly worshiped; loathed and longed for; hated and loved. His soul railed in fury against all that it represented, and yet lusted wildly for that which it proffered, a prize held tauntingly before a famished prisoner, torment and reward at once.

Master's retribution would be swift, and awful, a deserved ecstasy of pain.

It would make him stronger.

The proximity sensors abruptly sounded a warning klaxon: unidentified vessels to starboard and port. Grunting in dismay, _danger_ lancing through the Force fleet as lightning, he seized the yoke and commenced evasive maneuvers, only to discover the enemy ships had already locked on twin tractor beams. A bright flash of plasma zipped past his bows, clear warning that resistance was futile.

Snarling, he fingered the weapon's hilt still intact upon his belt, the last thing salvaged from the disastrous battleground below. He would teach a lesson to these interlopers….

But as the distance between them closed, he recognized the noxious insignia upon the newcomer's hull: the winged flame, proud banner of his Order's entrenched, primordial enemies. The _Jedi _had come for him. He had been betrayed, anticipated.

His first instinct was inchoate rage, a desire to immolate them all in a single explosive blast; he had but to activate his ship's auto-destruct to clinch such a pyrrhic victory. But the Dark whispered to him of other ways, of more devious and subtle snares, of deceit and serpent's wisdom. Limbs slackening, a grin drawing his lips back over yellowed teeth, he acquiesced to the promptings of his deeper self, the one clothed already in the pomp and majesty of perdition.

Let the accursed _Sentinels _come. He would surrender to them, seduce them with the honeyed lie of surrender, feint and retreat - and then, when the time was ripe, teach the arrogant and sanctimonious simpletons what it truly meant to be a "Shadow."

When the Jedi boarded his vessel a scant few minutes later, they found him chuckling to himself in the cockpit, and glibly attributed his mood to madness or else shock-induced hysteria.

They were wrong. So very, very wrong.

* * *

When black splotches floated before his eyes, like so many dark glowbugs flittering in a summer dusk, Anakin remembered to breathe.

He snapped shut his gaping jaw, swallowed, and blinked. "_Wizard," _ he breathed, reverently.

Beside him at the main pilot's station, Torbb Bakk'ile smiled. Just a little bit. She was stern, and huge. And slightly scary, although mostly nice. "Never seen a hyperspace tunnel before, hm?"

He shook his head, watching the lazy sworls of light ooze past their viewport, blue and white smearing into a continuous maze, a sinuously flowing kaleidoscope. He'd expected flying through transdimensional colocalized introspansive void to be like racing a pod, only faster. At least, that's what he'd imagined, perusing the one or two hyperdrive manuals he'd filched from Watto's store. It was hard to visualize based on mathematical formulae and dry academic text. But hyperspace turned out to be more like….

Winning.

Or like leaving.

That freefall sensation of unshackled, unstoppable plummeting into a new reality, into the unknown and the undefined. As though Tatooine and home and Mom were melting and smearing with the disjointed light just outside that transparisteel pane, as though the future were a gaping maw sucking him in, a vortex so vast and blank that he would surely be lost in its frigid, inky depths, swallowed whole and spat out like the carapace of a beetle once the innards had been licked clean, a shiny empty shell of himself.

He wrapped both arms around his shivering frame and realized something else about space travel. "It's _cold,"_ he lamented.

The huge Jedi next to him flicked her stern gaze sideways. "There are extra thermal blankets in the aft cabin. Space is cold." An indifferent shrug, one that bespoke _decades' _ experience, the easy apathy of a veteran.

"Okay," Anakin mumbled, sliding out of the copilot's seat and slinking to the hatchway on tiptoes. He wasn't sure, but prob'ly flying a spaceship required a lot of concentration, and he didn't want to disrupt hers.

In the next compartment, it was dim and even _colder- _not just in the air but everywhere, even inside where you couldn't see. It was kinda hard to explain, but that's how it was. Mister Qui-Gon was lying on the inset bunk, with his eyes closed, looking pretty waxen and white and dead. Mostly he was covered by a thin sheet, but they hadn't covered his face, maybe cause he was only mostly dead and not all the way. Anakin didn't understand what _animate suspension_ meant, so he wasn't sure. The only lights were tiny emergency blues running along the decks. And Mister Obi-Wan was sitting in the corner, or actually kinda kneeling there in the corner, with his eyes closed too. Only you could tell he wasn't asleep. He was just sorta thinking or something.

He'd wiped the blood off his face and pulled his hair back so he didn't look such an awful mess as before, and he had pretty big blanket, too. He was like the only warm thing in the whole cabin, or maybe in the whole universe. And all of a sudden Anakin didn't just want to fetch a blanket for himself. He needed to _be warm_ . So he approached, haltingly, and tugged on one corner of the double-woven cloth.

"Um….. sorry."

Mister Obi-Wan opened his eyes, then. He looked sad, really sad. And tired. "Anakin."

"I'm cold." He scuffed the deck with one foot. If Mom were here, she would know what to do. But Mom wasn't here. She was far, far away, left behind on Tatooine while he hurtled toward a faraway planet called Coruscant, where the Jedi Temple was located, where he would be safe, where…. he didn't know what. It had all happened so fast.

"Space is cold," the young Jedi agreed. One corner of his mouth twitched, like he might have remembered something funny or happy, but his eyes stayed sad. "I've always found it so, anyway."

Anakin edged closer. "Mister Qui-Gon's not really dead, right?" he whispered. "'Cause _nobody _can kill a Jedi."

Obi-Wan blinked a couple times, and looked away. "If only that were true," he said, kind of bittersweet and very softly. He looked more like a kid in the weird blue lighting, even with the blond and red stubble on his chin and cheeks, and the blood stains on his tunic and the weapon hilt at his belt. Anakin remembered thinking that there was _no way_ he could be a Jedi, the first time they'd met. He'd been expecting something far less… human.

"Are you cold too?" he inquired, bluntly.

That got him a faint quirking of the brows. He bit his lip, wondering if he'd broken an unspoken rule or something, like _children should be seen and not heard- _ but then the wizardest thing happened. Obi-Wan flicked one side of his blanket open in clear invitation. Anakin was snugged down beside him in a heartbeat, relishing the contact, the animal closeness, the blanket's flimsy armor wrapped round both their shoulders.

And it was warm that way, too. On Tatooine, in the poorly insulated slave quarters, that's how you stayed cozy on winter nights. Such occasions constituted some of his most cherished memories.

"I miss my Mom," he confessed, burrowing closer.

"I am sorry. Our departure was hasty, and you must be confused."

"I'm okay," he retorted, making it true by asserting it boldly. He was the Boonta Eve Podracing Champion. And he was traveling across the stars. With Jedi. "…Maybe adventures are always confusing at the beginning?"

Mister Obi-Wan made a quiet sound, mostly like a sigh but a little like a hoarse laugh. "Often at the end, too … and in the middle."

A daunting proposition, one which cast hero-ness in a novel light. He frowned, pondering it. "Well then, how do you ever know the right thing to do? If adventures are confusing like that?"

"That, my young friend, is why we have the Force."

'Force' was still a nebulous concept to Anakin, but _friend_ he understood. He latched onto the word, onto its implications, whether intentional or not, and sank deeper into the warmth kindling between them. He was confused, and lonely, and tired. Very tired. A thousand million questions swirled in his head, demanding answers, demanding explication and clarity, but his exhaustion could maintain but the feeblest hold upon any of them. Soon he was heavy-lidded, and speech an impossible task. He slumped against the only source of comfort present to him _,_ and let waiting slumber claim its due.

He dreamt of white spires, and menacing figures clothed in fire and shadow, of howling speed and hot wind, starlight and sunset - but mostly of Shmi's wise, gentle smile.

* * *

Cliegg Lars set the high-power transmitter the Jedi had given him among the other tech equipment in the farmhouse's humble kitchen, shaking his head a little. The 'extra' unit – hastily exhumed from the Republic shuttle's storage compartments – would cost somewhere in the vicinity of his entire year's income, here on Tatoiine. He might be one of, say, three men who owned such a piece of circuitry; he had no intention of letting word get around. Wealth was a dangerous thing.

And this wasn't for show – it was for Shmi. The younger Jedi, much less exotic and intimidating than the lady-Knight one who's accompanied him, had reminded them that the comm relay would only work during half the year, due to the planet's orbital path and the interference patterns generated by the twin suns. Also that the nearest Republic hub station could only receive and transmit messages, not a livetime holo. But that thin thread of connection had been sufficient for Shmi. She would be able to communicate with her son, however mediately.

Shmi was a good woman, a heart of rarest aurodium. She didn't want much, didn't demand anything.

He wrapped an arm about her now, as they stood in his – their- solarium courtyard.

"How long will it take for them to reach Coruscant?" she wondered aloud.

"Oh, it takes days on a passenger freighter from this far out. But I reckon that ship they had is a mite faster than I've ever flown upon."

She nestled close beside him, shivering slightly in the early morning chill. Soon they would venture forth to collect mushrooms, to begin the quotidian labor cycle, the quiet yoke of their allotted destiny. "There is so much I wish I could have told him…. Days and weeks of goodbye," she murmured.

Cliegg sighed. "He would have been welcome here, you know. Owen and he could have been brothers. It could have worked."

But Shmi shook her head. "No…. it is meant to be this way." Her head tipped sideways, to rest against his shoulder. "Ani is special. I've always known it. He must forge his own destiny. Did you know… Master Jinn even thought he might be _a Jedi_ someday."

Lars snorted. "Now there's an idea!"

Dawn's first pinks and golds spilled over the edge of the open roof above, a warm froth atop the hot deluge soon to follow. The sky faded from indigo to glowing cerulean, cloudless and illusorily close as ever. Somewhere in the background, a vaporator's generator circuits kicked into motion, thrumming subliminally in counterpoint to the last chirping rock beetles outside the earthen dwelling's walls.

"Well," Cliegg rumbled, pecking his beloved upon her weather-worn cheek, "We'd best get on with it."

* * *

**END BOOK 4**


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